


Camp Echidna

by pseudophoenix



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternative Perspective, Another camp, Bad Guy's POV, Gen, Post Battle of the Labyrinth, alternative POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 06:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 61,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1335094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudophoenix/pseuds/pseudophoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay, so let me get this straight: There's Camp Half-Blood for half-Greek gods and Camp Jupiter for half-Roman gods. Did we miss anyone? Oh yeah, let's not forget about Camp Echidna: The summer camp for the children of mythological monsters. The Minotaur? The sirens? Medusa? You really thought they'd let the gods have all the fun? Please. They get out more often than you'd think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is also on FanFiction Net under the same title and author username if that is your preferred reading website.  
> WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FROM ALL PERCY JACKSON AND HEROES OF OLYMPUS BOOKS, INCLUDING BLOOD OF OLYMPUS. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.  
> This story takes place AFTER The Battle of the Labyrinth at CHB, but BEFORE Percy turns fifteen at the end of the BotL book.

Look, we all know that I’d always wanted to be a dual-blood, so I might as well get this whole story off my chest.

And no, I'm not that stupid Peter Jackson guy or whatever his name is. I'm telling you that now because _he_ got the story all wrong. He left out some important details that he really should've told you all about. But I'll get to that later.

So, Lamia is telling me that I'm legally required to notify you of this or something: Being a dual-blood is dangerous. Pretty scary too. But I guess that if you truly are one, you'd probably ignore my advice about that. We're all thrill-seekers on the inside.

That actually brings me to my next point: If you think you _are_ a dual-blood, you might want to close this webpage now. Learning more about _who_ you are just makes it easier for them to see _what_ you are. Just go on jumping off cliffs, throwing yourself into fires, and keep up all those sweet stink bomb explosions in your school cafeteria. Anything besides reading this.

Of course, if you _don't_ do all that good stuff on a regular basis, keep on reading. I admire you for being able to pretend that none of this ever happened.

But, if at any time you recognize yourself in these pages or if you feel the sudden urge to do something spontaneously violent, stop reading immediately. It's only a matter of time before the Mist is spread too thin.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

...

I really didn’t get what the teacher was getting all worked up about. I mean, it’s not like anyone had gotten genuinely hurt. Spiders are really just like ants with extra legs, if you think about it. And they kill other annoying insects. That’s cool, right?

Well, that’s what I tried to tell the rest of my science class, anyways. But, _noooo_. Little miss Chloe Adeline Everly—my ever-so-enjoyable lab partner—just had to scream her little blonde head off about creepy little insects, which she must’ve known would set me off, because spiders are _definitely_ not insects.

“Can’t you count?” I told her, holding the one we were supposed to be examining up to her face. The tiny arachnid balanced neatly on my fingers. “See? Eight. Eight legs. Not six.”

“Freak!” she’d shrieked at me, backing away like I’d just sprouted an extra eye.

I shrugged and went back to making an enclosure out of pencils and textbooks for my new friend the spider. And that was when it got good: There I was, minding my own business, when all of a sudden, Chloe Adeline hit me across the back of the head with a hardcover novel.

Gods, I really hated books. Maybe that’s why I’m publishing this online for free instead of printing it out and trying to get people to buy it.

“There was a spider in your hair!” she said, alarmed, like she really cared about my hair, spider or not.

“That’s it,” I growled, launching myself at her. She yelped and dropped her book, ducking behind some lab equipment to get away from me.

Except, she didn’t account for the fact that I was probably the most agile person in the whole eighth grade. I jumped over the table, shattering glass vials and narrowly missing the tank of spiders we were supposed to be examining. We started rolling around between the lab tables, while the rest of the class stayed silent, except for a few brave ones who started laughing. That is, until the spiders got involved.

I really had no idea how it happened, but suddenly me and Chloe were both covered in creepy crawling spiders of every size.

Everyone in the class screamed as they realized that somehow, all of their test subjects had escaped from their tanks. Girls started climbing up on chairs, Chloe Adeline was trying hysterically to swipe the spiders from her clothes, and my best friend Kaia was laughing maniacally from the back of the classroom.

I stood up desperately and tried telling them it was no problem and that we could get them back in the tanks if they stopped freaking out, but they just kept right on screeching about bugs in their hair.

That’s about when Ms. Paley, the science teacher, decided to waltz back into the room after taking a break that she wasn’t even supposed to be allowed to do. I mean, who leaves a classroom full of kids alone with boxes of spiders, anyway?

“What is going on here?” she yelled over the chaos of the room. “Why are all the spiders out?”

It appeared as if Chloe had finally removed all the bugs from her hair, so she stood up and announced, “Ariadne did it! Ariadne let all the spiders out and then she attacked me.”

I hadn’t even blinked twice before Ms. Paley had the entire class out of the science lab and had called the office to say that Ariadne Weaver and Chloe Adeline Everly were going to be reporting there soon. She told us to take separate routes.

Walking past the rest of the class, I saw my classmates shaking spiders from their clothes. One girl was seriously freaking out and her hair was sticking up everywhere like she’d just run her hands through it a hundred times making sure that there weren’t any spare arachnids left in it. And then there was Kaia. There was a fat spider sitting right on top of her head, but she only grinned and fist-bumped me as I passed. I thought about mentioning it to her, but it looked pretty content up there, so I just left it.

...

I was sitting on a chair that the principal had made me drag out into the hallway while Chloe Adeline told her side of the story to him and Ms. Paley when my dad walked up. My father tended to drag his feet when he walked, and he always had a look to him that somehow made him appear like an insect with a bent antenna, unbalanced and disrupted. He was sporting messy brown-going-gray hair with a patterned button-up shirt that belonged in a different decade. He had dark blue eyes, like me, which had probably been just as bright as mine at some point, if not for the exhausted gaze that filled them.

I guess the school must have called him and explained the situation or whatever, because he just looked at me with his tired eyes like he was asking, _“Why?”_

I _hated_ when he gave me that look. You’d think I would’ve gotten used to it for all the times I’ve been sent to the principal’s office, but every single time he did it, he managed to send my emotions to the back of my gut to sit in a dark corner for an eternal time out.

I shrunk back in my chair. “She called spiders insects. And she hit me on the head with a book!” I insisted, tilting my head towards the door. “You know how much I hate books.”

“And what happened after that?” he sighed, raising his eyebrows at me.

I raised my eyebrows right back, daring him to make a guess at what happened.

He sighed some more, and nodded, and finally just pushed open the door to the principal’s office, just like I’d seen him do so many times before.

Oh, no, this was _definitely_ not the first time my dad had had to pick me up from school and talk to the teachers while I sat outside the door, wishing I could disappear. It’s too bad they couldn’t just expel me. That’s just one of the many downsides of living in a small town with just one middle school.

I counted to a thousand while I waited for my dad to come back out. Now he was wearing a face that seemed more to say, _“Really?”_

On the car ride home, I decided to sit in the back seat instead of riding shotgun. I never really felt bad about any of the stuff that I started at school until he found out, and then I felt guilty. Really, _really_ guilty. _Maybe he won’t try to talk to me,_ I thought.

But, of course, this is _me_ we’re talking about. And if you’ll learn anything from this story, it’ll be that I have the worst luck.

“You got suspended, you know,” he said, glancing up at the rear view mirror to look at me.

“Yeah, I figured that.”

“I saw that you forgot to take meds this morning.”

“The meds wouldn’t have made a difference.” That was actually the truth. The Adderall that I took for my ADHD did almost nothing for me; it was like something inside me just really did not want it to work.

“Well, you wouldn’t really know unless you took it, did you?” he said anyway.

I shrugged and tried to concentrate on the scenery by looking out the window. It was uneventful. I guess living in one extremely small city for your entire life will make you bored with your surroundings sometimes. The houses were mostly occupied by old grandmas and grandpas, because all of their children had grown up and gotten out of this stupid town. The streets were narrow and they went up and down small hills like roller coasters. Not that many people were driving on them, of course. Most people here just walked and biked everywhere in town, since it was so small. We had a grand total of one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school. Welcome to Porter, Indiana.

My house was on the north edge of town, nested right into the woods with no neighboring houses on our side of the street. There was a baseball diamond down the road from us, but almost no one except the Porter peewee baseball team ever used it. I was more interested in the woods that surrounded it.

As my dad pulled into the driveway, I glanced longingly at the tall trees casting perfect shadows around our house. I was definitely not going to be able to go out there again for a while.

“Ariadne Weaver,” my dad enunciated. “Go inside and go to your room. Don’t leave until I come back; I’ve got to go run some errands. You’re grounded.”

I was about to whine, _“And suspended?”_ but then I decided it would be better to just let it go. Hefting my backpack on my shoulder, I slammed the car door behind me as I got out of the car. I was suddenly very angry. Angry at myself, mostly. I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands. I was so _stupid_ sometimes.

I retrieved my key from my backpack and unlocked the door, watching my dad pull out of the driveway again.

Our home was one of those small, one-story half-brick and half-wood type houses with the inside painted with yellows and oranges that always reminded me of a construction site. There was a basketball hoop above the garage door, but it didn’t have a net and I never used it because I was really short and could never make a basket. It was a nice enough house, and it was cool because my dad and I had been living there since forever. He grew up there and had never thought to leave like all the other sensible people who used to live in this town.

That’s right, just me and my dad in that house. No maternal figures in sight. I’d never really known my mom and I’d never really wanted to. My dad once asked me why I didn’t ask more questions about her, but I just shrugged. _“What’s the point in you telling me about her if I’ll never know her myself?”_ I’d told him. But that didn’t necessarily stop him from telling me stories about her anyway. I think that they’d known each other for maybe a half a year or so before she’d told him that she had to go back to her family in Italy. No more than a year later, I show up on the front doorstep with no warning or explanation whatsoever. I’ve always thought that was kind of mean, but whenever my dad talked about her, he never seemed upset. He told me stuff about her, like what she liked or disliked.

 _“She didn’t like birds very much, especially big ones. But she liked bugs,”_ my dad would say to me. _“And she absolutely adored Greek mythology. That’s why I named you Ariadne, you know. You’re the Greek princess who helped Theseus kill the Minotaur.”_

I loved Greek mythology, too. We had a big picture book full of myths, and it was one of the few books that I could actually stand. My dad and I would talk for hours on end about Greek mythology, and what the Greeks thought about science and nature. He works as a high school biology teacher, so he knows all about that kind of stuff.

But regrettably, we’d been talking less and less recently.

I went to my room and dropped my backpack on the bed with a thud. Sitting down on top of my pile of blankets, I swiped my yo-yo off my desk and began sending it up and down the string. There wasn’t much space in my tiny, cramped room for fancy tricks, but I could certainly perform showy displays if I wasn’t cooped up in this suffocatingly small house.

My bedroom was usually a dark place and the air in there was probably more dust than oxygen. I rarely bothered to open the one tiny window it had. There were posters for obscure horror films covering the walls, and a small, narrow bed with mismatched covers stuffed into the corner of the room between a dresser and my desk. I didn’t do much in here besides sleep and occasionally sulk, like I was right about then.

I was almost always outside. In the woods, mostly. I loved to climb trees and jump down to the ground and maybe even try to jump from one to another.

You can guess that I’ve broken a lot of bones in the past.

It had been about fifteen minutes into my sulking session before a knocking sound came from the window and made me jump. The yo-yo hit the floor and I lost count of how many times I’d bounced it.

I went over to the dusty window and yanked the cord that made the blinds shoot up. Squinting at the sudden increase in light, I saw my best friend Kaia’s face pressed up against the screen on the window, with her nose closely resembling a pig’s. She beamed and waved at me with one hand while the other one remained tucked behind the strap of her backpack.

Kaia was really awesome because she had been my friend all year, and she didn’t call me a freak even once! Most people can’t get over my obsession with bugs and my ADHD and anger management issues and stuff. But, honestly, she’s a little weird herself. If there was one word to describe Kaia, it would be snakelike.

Kaia’s like a freaking ninja. She could sneak up on you wearing jingle bells. You’d think she’d be really clumsy and loud, because she walks kinda funny. She drags her feet a lot, but at the same time, she almost seems to glide down the hallways at school.

That makes her sound graceful, but, believe me, she’s not. I mean, she’s definitely not ugly, but you wouldn’t exactly call her cute. She’s got straight, sooty black hair and small, bottle green eyes that you would think should be able to glow in the dark like a snake's but evidently don’t.

One other thing about Kaia that only further reinforces the reptilian air about her is this lisp that she’s got that gets on everybody’s nerves. She told me once that she’s had it since she was a kid, and it was no big deal. It’s not like she’s hard to understand or anything, it’s just something about the letter S that makes it seem like she’s hissing at everyone.

I unlocked the window and pulled up the glass pane, feeling a breeze drift through the screen.

Kaia’s mouth went off right away. “Oh my goshh, Ari! Everyone at sschool is ssaying you were expelled and Chloe Adeline Everly has pretty much ssworn vengeance on you now, you know? Sso, like, I wass telling them all how you could _totally_ beat her in a fight, like, heck! You already did. But, oh my goshh! I’m talking too much. Everyone is ssaying you got expelled!”

I sighed. “No, not really. Just suspended. And, well, grounded.” I motioned dramatically to my surroundings—or lack thereof—to show what I meant.

Kaia’s giddiness evaporated and she leaned on my window sill. “Oh, ssorry. I guesss your dad didn’t take it well, huh?”

I shook my head. “He pretty much told me that I’m a prisoner here until he gets home.”

She tapped her fingers on the side of my house and I looked around my small, restricted room again.

“Want to take a walk with me?” Kaia asked. “I brought food.”

“Yes, please!” I slid the screen open on the window and hopped out. After closing the window behind me, Kaia and I started racing off into the forest behind my house. You might be able to blame Kaia’s weird limp, but I was always faster. I was faster than nearly everyone in our grade, for that matter.

I made a show of leaning coolly against a tree when Kaia finally caught up.

“That’ss not fair, you’re, like, ssuperhuman!”

“Oh, I’m sure.” I rolled my eyes.

Kaia shrugged off her backpack and sat down hard with her back against a tree. She dug around in her bag for a minute and pulled out a small orange box. She shook it at me.

“Your favorite,” she said, beaming.

“Aw, yes!” I responded, pouncing on the box. I took it and tore open the top, pouring some bacon-and-cheese-flavored crickets into my palm. Just another thing to add to the list of why normal people aren’t my friends. I stuffed the bugs in my mouth.

“Ariadne, you better make those lasst. You owe me like three dollarss for them.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I nodded and waved my hand, though we both knew that I would never pay her back. I was always broke, because my dad didn’t give me allowance or anything, and I was only thirteen, so I wouldn’t be able to get a job for at least a couple more weeks when I turned fourteen.

I didn’t know it back then, but by that time, everything would be different.

“So,” Kaia said, pulling a sandwich out of her backpack. “What’s been up with you recently?”

“Ah, same old, same old.” I reached up to a tree branch above my head and lifted myself off the ground. “You know, sometimes I really do wish that I was superhuman. That’d be tons better than just plain, old Ariadne Weaver.” I swung my legs up on the branch and let go so I was hanging from my knees.

“Lissten, Ari.” Kaia took a bite out of her sandwich and proceeded to talk with her mouth full. “If you are anything, you are definitely not plain. You eat cricketss like Cheetos and are the fastesst human I’ve ever met and you are currently hanging upsside down from a tree. Face it, you’re not ordinary by a long shot.”

“Um...”

“Gah!” Kaia dropped her sandwich and slapped her palm on her forehead. “That came out wrong. I meant it as a good thing!”

“That’s okay.” I smiled at her. “I know what you mean.”

“Exactly.” She retrieved her snack from the ground where she’d dropped it, dusted it off, and pointed to me with it. “That’ss why you’re my best friend.”

I shrugged, which was weird considering that I was upside down. “I guess.”

“Hey, wanna race again? To the other end of the forest?”

I grinned. “It’s not much of a race when you’re dragging your feet all the time.”

Laughing, Kaia got up. “Challenge accepted.”

In one smooth movement, I flipped off of the tree branch and landed squarely on the soft ground. Kaia had already taken off, but I caught up to her in a matter of seconds. She shouted something after me that I couldn’t hear. It only took a minute or two for me to decide to play a little trick on my friend.

Stopping, I looked around a small clearing to find a good tree. I scaled one easily, not minding the rough bark scratching my hands. The air smelled crisp and the trees swayed in the light breeze. I felt a little guilty for leaving when my dad had told me to stay inside my room, but I would be back before he even got home! And he didn’t _really_ expect me to stay cooped up in that little bedroom of mine all day anyway, did he? Pretty impossible if you ask me.

Kaia suddenly entered the small clearing. She cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled down the pathway that I probably would’ve gone down if I hadn’t thought up my brilliant idea to climb the tree. “Ari! I give up! You totally win!”

She sighed and then laughed a little. I grinned as she slowly made her way to a tree next to mine and sat down underneath it. She started picking at the grass and I cautiously climbed up my branch. I would have to swing to the next tree over.

Hoping that she would mistake my noise for a squirrel or a bird, I carefully hopped to the next branch. I closed my eyes and bit my lip, praying that it would hold my weight. It did.

 _This is gonna be gold,_ I thought to myself, as Kaia continued to twirl a blade of grass around her finger. I felt a tickling at my ear, and I brushed my hand over the spot. When it came away, there was a tiny spider clutching onto my finger. Smiling, I placed it on the branch next to me.

“Come to watch, huh?” I asked it quietly. “You picked a great spot.”

Below, Kaia snapped her head back to look up at the tree. I melted back into the leaves. She wouldn’t be able to see me here. When she went back to her attempts at making a grass whistle, I started lowering myself down, branch by branch until I was within jumping distance from the ground. I counted down in my head. _Three... two... one!_

I tackled Kaia and she let out a yelp of alarm. I wrapped my arms around her head. I was laughing hysterically when I felt a pinching feeling on my right arm.

“Ah, Kaia! Did you just bite me?”

“Ari! What was— oopss, ssorry. I guesss I did bite you. Ssorry! Ssorry! Natural insstinct, I sswear!”

Oh well. Maybe my brilliant trick wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped. “It’s oka—”

“I sseriously didn’t mean to—”

“Kaia, really. It’s okay, I was the one who scared you in the first place.”

“Um... Oh my godss, Ari...”

“Yeah?”

“Your arm is, like, bleeding!”

“What?”

I suddenly felt an intense stinging sensation in my forearm where she had bit me. When I looked down, what I saw made me absolutely sick to my stomach. The flesh around the two small puncture marks on my arm was turning _green._

Yelping, my first inclination was to rub the area where my skin was being zombified, resulting in my smearing the blood from the wounds up and down my arm.

“Sstop! Sstop!” Kaia told me frantically, grabbing my wrist. “You’re only making it worsse by sspreading the venom around!”

 _Venom? What!_ I examined my arm through the blood. _Where had those two marks come from anyway? All she did was bite me!_

I screamed and waved my arm back and forth, like I could shake off the horrible burning feeling in my arm.

“Ari! Sstop it! You’re only sspeeding up the processs by getting your blood pumping. It’ll only sspread the venom to your heart!”

I had absolutely no idea what Kaia was talking about, I only had enough sense left in me to register what she was saying and stop flinging my arm around.

“Okay...” Kaia’s voice sounded disturbingly soothing. “Now you have to _calm down._ ”

“How am I supposed to do that when—”

“Jusst. Calm. Down.”

I took a deep breath, trying to do what Kaia asked. She obviously thought she knew something on the subject of poison.

“Good.” She grimaced. “Your heart should stop beating any minute now.”

“WHAT?” I screamed. Obviously, my heart rate would not be going down any time soon.

“I did not jusst ssay that!” Kaia yelled, beating her fists on the sides of her head.

“Kaia, what’s happening? And since when do you have fangs!”

It was true. Kaia’s face looked longer and sharper than usual, and when she opened her mouth to reply, her canine teeth were strangely elongated.

My knees were jelly. I sat down hard in the grass.

Kaia knelt next to me. “Ari! Ari, are you okay?”

I strained my neck to look up at her. “Is this some kind of joke?” I asked her. I had my good hand wrapped around the sticky, damp skin on the arm that she’d bitten. My insides didn’t feel much better than my outsides looked. My breathing was shallow and any part of me that wasn’t a sickly shade of green was deathly pale. _Could I really be dying?_

“No, it’ss really happening— er— I mean, nope! Thiss iss all jusst a prank! I got you, haha,” she laughed nervously.

“You _really_ suck at lying, Kaia.”

“Okay, okay! Thiss iss real!”

“You better start explaining _now,_ ” I commanded.

“Um, ssure. Okay. Sso, well, long sstory.”

“Out with it! I’m dying over here!” I was really panicking now. But even more than that, I was furious. I got mad when I didn’t understand something; and boy, was I not understanding the situation now. My anger management issues were really starting to show.

“Alright, sso, you know the Greek mythss, right?”

“Yeah, duh. I’m named after one!”

“Oh, right! I sshould’ve figured that out... Anyway! Sso, like, how do I ssay this? Well, they’re real.”

“Skip to the part where you have fangs,” I spat through clenched teeth, not having time for the whole “Greek mythology is real” concept at the moment.

“Okay, so there are these Greek gods, right? So, one of them made this, like, monster. Named Echidna. And she, like, made all these other monsters, like the Sirens and the Chimera and—”

“I get it!”

“I’m one of those monsters. I’m a scythian dracaena... a snake woman.”

“And you just bit me, and I’m gonna die?” I asked, because that was really the only detail I cared about at the time.

“Maybe not!” Kaia said hurriedly. “Not if you calm down and I can get you back to Camp and—”

“Fine!” I took a few deep breaths to show her that I could be calm.

“Great.” Kaia forced a smile. “Now, drink this.” She produced a plastic water bottle from her backpack. Only, I sincerely doubted that it was holding water. The sticky-looking liquid inside of it was a dark red color.

“What is _that_?” I asked, though I didn’t wait for an answer. I just took the bottle in my trembling hands and popped the top open with my teeth. I hesitantly took a small sip. I couldn’t tell you what it tasted like, because it didn’t really taste like anything. Water, maybe. But even _water_ has some taste. This was like drinking liquid _air._

I took another sip, but this time Kaia tipped the bottom up and the entire contents drained into my mouth. I was choking and sputtering for a second, but then it evaporated in my throat.

It was a pleasant sensation. Until I blacked out the next second.


	2. Chapter 2

The room I stood in was vast and echoey. There was enough light to see by, though if there was a source of the brightness, I couldn’t detect it. I couldn’t even be sure that this place—wherever it was—was just a room; the ceiling was so high up that I couldn’t see it through the darkness of the cavern. It was so quiet that I could hear my own heart beating. I took a small step forward, my sneaker making a soft squeak on the smooth, stone floor.

In the very center of the chamber, there was a small throne, facing away from me. That hadn’t been there a second ago, had it? It was a chair at ground level, with silvery fabric draped across the back, and jewels studded in the base. I took another hesitant step forward, not knowing what else to do. Suddenly, the chair spun around to reveal who was sitting there. It was me. But, it _wasn’t_ me. At least, I didn’t think it was.

The girl slouching in the throne definitely looked like me. She had the same long, wavy black hair as me, and the same short, turned-up nose. It was like looking in a mirror. A very real, very menacing, three-dimensional mirror.

When the clone-me raised her face to look at me with dissatisfaction, I saw that her eyes—though the same round shape and dark blue color—were much different from mine. They were looming and ominous, and they seemed to suck the light from the air and spit more darkness back out.

“Everything is about to get very... interesting, isn’t it?” the other-me growled, flashing her disturbing eyes at me.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said in a quavering voice.

“Just you wait,” she smirked, sitting up higher in her throne. “You’ll see soon enough.”

All of a sudden, the dimness of the haunting room was replaced by a bright yellow light, coming from above me. I felt something graze my arm lightly and the skin stung worse than a bad sun burn. I groaned, shutting my eyes tight again. When I tried to tug my hand away from whatever was holding it, my muscles ached, and a voice mumbled, “Um, I wouldn’t if I were you.”

Despite the warning, I pulled my arm up to my chest and clawed at the wrappings around it. It was some kind of cloth bandage.

The voice from before sighed. “Come on! I’d just gotten done wrapping that.”

When I finally tore all of the bandages away and took a good look at my arm, I felt like throwing up. My skin had turned brown and purple and green and just about every other disgusting color around two white, scarred-over puncture marks embedded next to each other in my arm.

“I guess I’ll just start over, then,” the person muttered, taking my wrist again, gingerly.

“What?” I asked groggily. “Where—?”

“Before I answer your questions,” the voice—whom I was pretty sure was male—told me, “I’m supposed to inform you that you’re not dead. Congratulations.”

I turned my head towards him but couldn’t make out much except for a dark silhouette. I opened my mouth as much as I could. My tongue was dry. “I figured that,” I managed. “I didn’t think dying was supposed to hurt _this_ much.”

The guy laughed. “Oh, the Camp is sure going to like you.”

Before I could ask what “the Camp” meant, I felt myself slipping back into darkness. In seconds I was out cold again.

...

The next time I woke up, my room was pitch-black and empty. I felt around in the dark until I found a lamp on a small table next to my bed. I flipped it on and squinted. Dust floated around the lamp, along with a stringy piece of cobweb drifting from the nightstand to the wall. A small spider crawled out from under the lampshade and peaked out at me.

“Hey,” I croaked to it. My throat hurt, but nowhere near as much as my arm did. The bandage was still on it, but this time I knew better than to mess with it. Whatever had happened to my arm, I really didn’t want to know the details.

I tried lifting my injured hand to the spider, but it ached so much that I could barely move it. Instead, I touched my left hand to the lamp and the spider scuttled onto it.

I couldn’t remember a whole lot that had happened... At the time I was thinking I probably dreamed up most of the past few— what, hours? Days? _Longer_?That was a scary thought. It made me suddenly eager to figure out where I was. No more messing around with bugs. I put my spider friend back down on the nightstand and pushed the soft blankets off of me. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, my vision went fuzzy. _This is going to prove problematic,_ I thought to myself. When my head stopped spinning, I tried standing up.

The tiny spider just sat and watched me wobble on my feet.

“Well, I don’t see _you_ helping any,” I told it.

It seemed to be laughing at me.

I stumbled to the door across the room, clutching the doorknob once I’d gotten there. It had only been four small steps, but I already felt like I would black out. I twisted the simple wooden doorknob and pulled the door open. I’d half expected—and maybe hoped—that it would be locked, but I just didn’t have that kind of luck, then, did I?

The hallway was dark, narrow, and long. What kind of building was this? It didn’t seem like any kind of prison. A hospital, maybe? I vaguely remembered someone mentioning something about a camp...

A shadow shifted at the end of the corridor. A person was walking this way. I thought about my options. Duck back into my room and pretend I was asleep the whole time? I didn’t know if I’d be able to move fast enough for that. Maybe I could just try and walk past whoever the person was and hope that they didn’t recognize me. After a second, I realized that was a stupid idea.

Too late to do anything now. The figure lifted their head to look at me.

“Hey, you’re up,” the guy said in a hazily familiar voice, sounding only mildly surprised.

“Uh-huh,” I grunted. I was getting tired again, so I leaned against the doorframe to my room. I decided to get right to the point. “What is this place and why am I here?” I demanded.

“You’re in the Sick Bay at Camp Echidna,” he explained, considerately.

I gave him a look. “Camp Enchilada. Great. Well, _that_ really clears things up.”

Maybe being snippy like that wasn’t the best strategy for me to choose if I was going to find my way out of this place unharmed, but the guy just smirked. I couldn’t see very well between the darkness of the hallway and the black spots forming in my vision, but I could tell that he was much taller than me, and skinny as a beanpole.

“It’s _Echidna_. Ee-KID-na. Like, the mother of all monsters. Look, I promise you’ll get everything explained to you later, okay?” he assured. “Right now... how are you feeling?”

I realized that he must’ve been the same guy as before; the one who’d wrapped my arm.

“Like an angry lumberman got a hold of my arm and put it through a woodchipper a few hundred times, then handed it off to his friend the blacksmith to smelt into some kind of chew toy for rabid wolves.”

As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw the tall boy grin ruefully. “That’s what scythian dracaena venom does to you. We’re all really surprised that you survived, actually.” When he saw my confusion, he asked, “You don’t remember much, do you?”

I thought back. I remembered the forest behind my house... and me and Kaia running... and me climbing... It was coming back to me.

“Who _are_ you?” I asked.

“My name’s Chaos.”

“That doesn’t sound like a real name,” I stated.

“Well, tell that to my dad then, because I don’t think so either.” He paused, maybe to see if I would laugh or not. “It’s Greek,” he continued. “The immortal force that created the titans.”

“Greek?”

“Same as yours, _Ariadne_.”

“How do you—?”

“Know your name? Kaia told me.”

“Kaia!” I breathed. “You know her? Is she here?”

“Yeah, she’s probably outside somewhere.” He held out his arm to me for support. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

He led me down the hallway. There was light streaming out of some of the cracks in the doors, but most of them were dark. I wondered how many rooms there were, and then remembered that there were more important things to address.

“So, uh, listen,” I said, nervously. “Kaia told me something right before I blacked out from... whatever made me black out. It was something about Greek mythology.” I didn’t want to say anything stupid, in case whatever I thought Kaia had told me was a hallucination or a dream or something.

But the guy with the weird name just nodded and said, “Go on.”

“And, well, it might sound weird, but...” I paused, choosing my next words carefully, and then speaking very quickly. “She told me the Greek gods are real, and the monsters too, and that she poisoned me, or something. Does that make sense? Was she—?”

“Telling the truth?” Chaos interrupted. “Most definitely.”

“What does that mean exactly? ‘The Greek gods are real?’”

“Well, _they’re real_ ; that’s one major thing.” I couldn’t tell for sure in the dark, but I was pretty sure he rolled his eyes right about then. “Would you like me to repeat it in Latin for you?”

“No thanks,” I retorted, sensing his sarcasm. “But, really. I mean, I know some people are really religious; I’m not, but I know some people are, and—”

Chaos cut me off again. “Religion doesn’t have anything to do with it. They’re real, trust me.”

“Alright,” I snapped, suddenly angry from frustration. “But forgive me if I decide not to take the word of some random guy with a flaky name and a snarky personality that I just met on the topic of almighty divine beings.”

He held his hands up in the air. “I’m not expecting you to believe me right this second. Just—I don’t know—brace yourself for some freaky stuff. It’ll turn up sooner or later.”

 _Freaky stuff,_ I thought. _Great. Bring it on. I am the freaking_ queen _of freaky stuff. I can take anything that comes my way, even a Greek god, if that’s what it comes to._

Ha! If only I had known.

...

By the time we actually got out of that building, I was about ready to throw up again. My head spun from all of the weaving, identical hallways the place had. I lowered myself onto the top step leading up to the big building and sat panting with my head between my knees. A fold out chalkboard, like the ones they put in front of cafes to advertise, stood next to me on the wooden deck. It read, “Sick Bay” in lime-green chalk, along with, “Did you hear about the guy who got torn in half? The nurses said there wasn’t much left, but he’s all right now!”

Dizziness and horrible jokes aside, the breeze felt wonderful. I heard a soft crashing noise, like water against rocks, and instantly wondered if we were near the ocean.

I lifted my head up and squinted my eyes at the brightness. The sun was high up in the sky, and I figured it must’ve been late in the afternoon. Laid out in front of me was a sight that I definitely had not been expecting.

“Are you okay?” Chaos asked me, sitting down next to me on the porch steps. In the light, I could now see that he was wearing a dark jacket with the hood up, despite the warm weather. He also had on sunglasses. They were simple and not flashy, like they were meant to be practical, not to show off or draw attention.

“Yeah...” I trailed off. “Where am I, again?”

“It’s called Camp Echidna, located in Miami, Florida,” he said.

“Miami?” I inquired. I was from Indiana, and had never really been traveling that much. I’d never been much farther south than Kentucky, much less to the state of Florida.

Chaos nodded to me. “Tucked right into a corner of the Bermuda Triangle.”

“And this is... a summer camp,” I stated, looking to Chaos for confirmation.

I looked out at all the summer camp-like stuff spread out around the valley that dipped below us and the Sick Bay. There were dirt paths criss-crossing the area, with kids milling around in shorts and green T-shirts. There was a small square building that looked like it should’ve been covered in cobwebs due to how deserted it appeared, and a big round building with kids flowing in and out like water.

Among the assortment of other buildings were two long structures. From this distance, I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the one on the right was constructed completely of glistening marble, and the other one appeared to be made all out of splintery, brown wood. In between the Sick Bay and the two long buildings was an open area dotted with black trees. There were tons of teenagers there; some were older, maybe seventeen or eighteen, but most looked about thirteen, like me. They were just relaxing, like you’d think kids would at a summer camp. Some younger ones played tag, some older ones held hands and walked side by side, and some were even... were they fighting with swords?

Chaos replied, “A special kind of summer camp.”

I was about to ask him what that meant, when a boy passed in front of Sick Bay. He didn’t look like he was on his way to do anything important, he kind of just ambled along with a sway in his step. The boy was tall, but not nearly as tall as Chaos. He had dark, close-cropped hair and bronze skin. He didn’t so much as walk by, but saunter past us. As the dark haired boy’s feet crunched on the dirt path in front of the Sick Bay, Chaos followed the his movements with his head, as if he were expecting him to do something interesting.

Just as the boy was about to depart down another pathway, he stopped, and without turning, he started backing up until he stood in front of us. Then he grinned and pivoted to look at us.

“Hey,” he said casually, flashing me a bright smile. From here, I could see that his eyes were a dazzling golden color, like a fox’s.

“Hi,” I replied, returning a less flamboyant expression.

“You must be the new camper everyone’s been freaking out about.” He put on a worried face for me. “How’s the arm?”

“Horrible,” I stated.

He ignored me and held out his hand. “The name’s Ruin. Ruin Abaddon,” he said coolly, nodding his head a little. He sounded like the hero in an action movie.

“Ariadne,” I answered, without getting up to shake his hand.

Next to me, Chaos smirked as the boy put his arm down.

“Sorry,” I remarked. “Did you say your name was _Ruin_?”

“That’s right.” His faced stretched into a grin. “I like your name, too,” he said, slickly, flicking his dark hair out of his eyes.

“Stop trying to be so smooth, Ruin,” Chaos finally spoke up. “People don’t flip over it as much as you think.”

“Shut up, _snake-head_ ,” Ruin jeered, his smile dripping down into a sneer.

Chaos appeared irritated. “ _Fatuus_ ,” he said under his breath.

Ruin opened his mouth and looked like he was about to add something else, but then he just turned and stalked away.

“Did you just... call him fat?” I asked, thoroughly perplexed by the entire exchange.

“No,” Chaos replied, sitting back on the steps to the Sick Bay. “I called him an idiot.”

“Okay then.”

“You should really just ignore him, he’s _vere impar_.”

“Uh...”

“Sorry,” he added. “I mean, he’s really odd.”

I looked at him. “What language is that?” I asked, genuinely interested.

“Latin. Sorry if I slip into the dialect sometimes. I grew up around it.”

“Oh. Are you from... wherever they speak Latin?”

“Latin is a dead language.”

“Right. I knew that.”

He grinned at me. “I guess you could say that my mom is from where they used to speak it, though.”

I felt dumb. That’s the one downside to not paying attention in school: not knowing about stupid stuff like dead languages.

“Don’t work yourself up over it,” Chaos told me, even though I hadn’t said anything. “There are a lot of things campers don’t know when they first get here.”

“Does that mean that when you were offering to repeat ‘Greek gods are real’ in Latin, you could—”

“Actually do it?” he said. “Yes.”

“I can’t tell if you’re psychic or just like to finish my sentences.”

Chaos shrugged. “I’m used to having the same questions asked to me a lot.”

“So, you’re the one who shows the new campers around.”

“No, I just patch them up if they’re hurt and teach them how to fight if they don’t know how. I’m not a tour guide. Though, speaking of chaperons, there’s Kaia.”

I snapped my head up, and sure enough, there was Kaia; slick black hair, green slitted eyes, scaly skin... wait, what?

Yelping, I jumped back a little.

“Don’t freak out!” she stammered. The humanoid-looking lizard monster with my best friend’s voice looked at Chaos. “I forgot the Misst again, didn’t I?” she hissed.

Glancing at Chaos, I could see him smile a little bit and raise his eyebrows from beneath his sunglasses. “Yep,” he said, like he was used to this.

I didn’t get it. Chaos was just sitting back on the stairs with his elbows resting on the step behind him. Why wasn’t he flipping out?

“Dang it!” Kaia exclaimed.

From the waist up, she looked very much like the Kaia that I had come to know and love, every feature perfectly in place. Her legs, though; those were a different matter altogether. In place of her regular human legs, there were two snake bodies. I thought it appeared a little as if she was wearing snakeskin pants, but then I saw her walk. Well, er, slither. Kaia nervously chewed on her lower lip with her fangs.

“Please tell me that’s just really good monster makeup,” I said.

“Um, not exactly,” she replied. “Drop the ‘makeup’ part of it.”

“Told you to brace yourself,” I heard Chaos mutter next to me.

“Oh my god, you weren’t kidding around.”

“You mean, ‘oh my _gods_ ,’” he said.

“Chaoss!” Kaia whined. “How much did you tell her? That’s my job!”

“No worries, I left all the cool stuff for you, Kaia,” he said, standing up and stuffing his hands in his pockets. He looked back at me. “My work here is done. Just watch the arm, alright? Good luck.”

He trudged off down the trail towards the big round building in the distance without another word. _Please don’t leave me!_ I wanted to shout at him. _My best friend has snake legs and I don’t know what to do!_

“Ari,” Kaia said, taking a hesitant step forward. “I’m sso glad I didn’t kill you!”

“You have no idea how much I agree with you.”

“Oh, you musst have sso many quesstionss.” Kaia clasped her scaly hands in front of her and nodded at me like she was a psychiatrist ready to listen to an insane person’s life story.

 _Oh, where do I start?_ I wanted to ask. “Uh, what up with the fangs, first off?”

“I told you before, I’m a scythian dracaena.”

“Like, the Greek snake women?” I asked, remembering my mythology book from home.

“Exactly like the Greek ssnake women,” Kaia agreed.

“So, you and Chaos were telling the truth, about the gods being real?”

“Well, more importantly, Greek _monsters_ are real, but yeah.”

“Is everything from mythology real, then? The Underworld, Mount Olympus, stuff like that?”

“Basically.”

Looking back on it now, I have to admit that I felt a certain amount of ease in believing that statement, even back then when it was all new to me. As if I’d known that fact all my life, and I just hadn’t remembered that I’d known it until that moment.

“So, um... when did all _that_ happen?” I asked.

“You know the sstoriess, Ariadne,” Kaia said, slithering over to sit next to me. I scooted a few inches away from her. “The godss made the entire universe. Well, I guesss technically it was the titanss... or the primordial deities. It’ss all very confusing.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“But anyway, it’ss been like thiss ssince the dawn of time. They’ve alwayss been here. They sstarted out by getting big in Greece, then moved on to influence the Roman empire with different namess, and sslowly took over the resst of Europe over the yearss, but they never sstayed in one country for too long. They move around with the world’s center of power. That meanss they’re here now, by the way. And, while we’re talking about the gods, I might as well mention that the monsters move around with them. Sso they’re here too!”

“I’ve noticed.”

Kaia just smiled and nodded at me, tapping her long sharp fingernails on her leg—I mean, snake trunk.

“And I haven’t heard of the gods being real... why?” I asked.

“Don’t be ssilly, Ari. Do you have any idea how the _mortals_ would react if they found out there was actual real-life _gods_ , making it thunder, making the ssun come up in the morningss, making people fall in love? Total discord.”

“Then, all the science we know is actually fake? We just _think_ that the earth revolves around the sun, or that night and day are from us turning in space?”

“Don’t assk me. I jusst accept that I’m here with snake legs and don’t question it.”

I sighed helplessly. “Alright, but why am I hearing about this now? Of all times? When were you planning on telling me that you were snakes and scales from the waist down?”

“Well, I had to be ssure about your parentage.”

“My parentage?”

“You’re a dual-blood.”

“Dual-blood?”

“Meaning you’ve got both blood typess.”

“Kaia, how many times am I going to have to repeat the last few words of every sentence you say in a questioning tone until you actually tell me what that means?”

Kaia said, “It meanss you've got half mortal and half semi-mortal blood.”

“You mean immortal?”

“Well, yess and no. It'ss complicated.”

I was starting to get frustrated. “Is this how the entire conversation is going to be?”

“You’re half human,” she offered.

“So if I'm only half human, do I even want to know what my other fifty percent is?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay. Tell me anyway.”

“I sshould sstart out by ssaying that even though they were born like a gazillion yearss ago, the godss haven’t really changed much since the beginning of time. Jusst like in the mythss, they have a lot of kidss with mortalss.”

“Uh... cool?”

“Well, maybe for them!” Kaia snapped. “Ugh, prissy little privileged demigods. Prancing around with their sspecial godly powers. They make me ssick.”

“So, you were saying...”

“Oh, yeah. Sso, there’s these demigods—or half-bloods, whichever you prefer—running around the United Statess, killing off all the monsters. Like it’ss their _job_ or something. Ugh, completely annoying. Anyway, you know some monsterss from Greek mythology, right?”

“Of course. Medusa, the Sirens, the Minotaur. I could go on. But, didn’t they all die a really long time ago, according to the myths? Heroes killed them off and everything, right?”

Kaia shook her head. “Not really. You can’t actually kill a monster permanently. Well, you _can_ kill us, but we just go back to Tartarus and reform again. Ssometimes it takes a while, but we always come back. It’s part of the reason heroess exist; they keep us at bay.”

“Wait, tartar sauce makes monsters reform?”

“TAR-ta-russ, Ari,” Kaia said, sounding the word out for me. “The deepest part of the Underworld where monsterss come from.”

“Alright. So, the famous monsters like the Hydra and Medusa are still around.”

“Exactly,” Kaia confirmed. “So the monsters, when they noticed that the gods were having kids with mortals, they decided that they needed more of their own children to defeat them all and protect themselves. Ones that weren’t as fragile as regular monsters, who just crumble into dust when demigods hit them.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t look so surprised, Ariadne,” Kaia laughed. “You really thought the monsters would let the gods have all the fun?”

I shrugged, saying, “I guess not.”

“So, along with the demigods, there are these kids that are half-monster and half-human.”

“And they’re just like normal humans?”

“Well, most of them have special powers depending on their parent. Some of them have physical attributes carried over from their monster parents, too.”

“Where are all the half-monsters, then? Wouldn’t they have to be in hiding to keep people from finding out about them?”

“That’s what Camp Echidna is for!” Kaia swept her arm around, gesturing to the valley below us. “We train the dual-bloods to fight! Among other things, of course.”

What Kaia was saying slowly dawned on me. “You mean... _all_ these kids are fifty percent monster? And... and you think I’m one of them! Don’t you?”

“Well, of course,” Kaia chimed. “You smell like one!”

I fought the urge to sniff myself.

“You have an aura of power like no other human, Ariadne,” Kaia explained. “You’ve got ADHD and anger management issues, right? Those are really strong signs of a dual-blood. The ADHD helps in battle. It keeps you on your toes. The anger stuff is because you’re naturally vicious. It’s literally in your blood, most likely. Not to mention that you survived my scythian dracaena venom.”

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The pieces fit together... “But— but—- how did you even find me?” I asked her.

“We’ve got dracaena sstationed at sschools everywhere. It was a bit of a longshot going to a ssmall town like yourss to investigate, but we had been ssensing power coming from that sschool for a while, we just didn’t know which sstudent it was. Now I’m ssure it’ss you!”

“You mean, you’re certain that I’m a dual-blood?”

“That’ss right!” Kaia cheered. “Ariadne Weaver, daughter of... uh... did Chaos and Lamia ever figure out who your mom is?”

“Who’s Lamia?” I asked.

“Never mind. Let’ss finish the tour firsst, and I’ll take you to ssee her later. Sshe’ll definitely want to meet you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Kaia, I'll never get tired of clicking through your speech impediment on Microsoft Word's grammar check.


	3. Chapter 3

As we walked through the clusters of buildings in the valley, Kaia explained what each one of them was. I’d never wondered what a summer camp for children of monsters from Greek mythology would be like, and it turns out, I didn’t really have to; it was a lot like a regular summer camp. Along with the normal camp stuff like an arts and crafts house, basketball court, and archery range, Kaia talked about how there was a forge for making weapons, and pointed out the man-eating horse stables to me as we passed them.

Another thing I learned was that, apparently, Kaia was well-known around camp. Random kids kept coming up and speaking in what was probably Latin to her. She would laugh with them and then introduce me. I wasn't usually shy, but a lot of the kids were bigger than me. I mean, I was used to being the short one, but these kids all looked tough and solid, and some even had various weapons hanging at their sides. That part was actually pretty cool, but I have to admit that the idea of them being half-monster intimidated me; that is, until I remembered that I was supposed to be one of them.

By sunset, names and faces were flying around my head. I could barely keep them all straight. Everyone I met looked seemingly normal—apart from the occasional patch of scales or feathers—but I could tell something about them was slightly different compared to an average middle school kid; whether it was the mischievous look in their eyes, or the clubs and swords in their hands, I didn’t know. Kaia sometimes mentioned their monster parent, and with each new monster she named, I asked myself, _Whose child am I? Who's my monster parent?_

I was feeling particularly dizzy after a large group of giggling girls walked passed us, and Kaia had insisted on them telling me all of their names. Of course, I didn't remember a single one of them afterward. It didn’t help that my bad arm itched really bad, and my head was starting to hurt again. I considered asking Kaia if we could take a break from walking, but then she mentioned that it was about time to go to dinner, and my stomach grumbled.

Kaia steered me towards the Mess Hall. I was so occupied trying to blink the black spots out of my eyes that I didn’t notice when I almost ran into another kid. But when I saw him, I couldn’t even sure if he _was_ a kid, honestly. He was huge; tall with muscles, dark skin, and curly brown hair.

“Oh, hi, Theodore,” Kaia greeted him.

I took a step back to look up at him.

“Hi,” he said timidly. “Who... are you?” he asked me quietly, stepping back a bit too, as if he was _afraid_ of me or something. Except, he was built like an ox! I didn't think someone like him could even be capable of being scared of anything. Him being well over six feet tall made my five-foot frame look miniscule.

Before I could answer his question for myself, Kaia said, “Theo, this is Ariadne. Sshe’s the one who’s been in the Ssick Bay for the passt couple of days.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said for what seemed like the millionth time that evening.

“Uh... you... too,” he said shyly.

“Ari, Theo is a sson of the Minotaur,” Kaia told me.

“Oh,” I said. “That explains it.”

“What... does it explain?” Theo said slowly, like he was thinking over exactly how to ask the simple question.

“Nothing,” I replied, taking one last glance at the mace strapped to his hip. “But, the Minotaur, huh? That’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah... uh... who’s your... parent?” he inquired.

“You mean my mom?” I asked, assuming that he meant my monster parent. “I don’t know yet.”

“Oh... undetermined...”

“Anyway,” Kaia said. “It’s almost time for dinner. We were just headed to the Mess Hall, Theo. Ooo! I know, we can walk together!"

"Uh..." Theo's eyes flitted around, probably looking for an excuse to not go with us. Apparently he didn't find one, because he nodded his head.

We started walking in silence, the sun slowly setting in the distance. I wondered what that meant; is our side of the earth turning away from the sun, or are Apollo and the sun chariot just flying away?

"What's wrong with your arm?" Theo questioned me, finally speaking above the tone of a mumble.

I looked down and remembered my bandage. "Oh. I was bit."

"By what?"

"Kaia."

Theo grinned, his shyness fading slowly.

"Hey! I ssaid ssorry like a billion times for that!" Kaia snapped playfully. “But it was kind of your fault for sscaring me, too.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. We really should stop playing pranks on each other.”

“Oh, come on, Ari. You and I both know that’ss not really going to happen.”

“True.”

“Does that mean you were poisoned, too?” Theo asked.

“Yeah. And, apparently I’ve been out for a couple of days.”

“But you survived.” Theo looked at me in awe. “I don’t know anyone who’s ever done that.”

“Really?” I don’t know why, I guess, but I thought it must’ve been a common thing among monster children to survive poisonings.

“Lamia ssays sshe ssuspectss Ariadne has a natural immunity to venom, like children of ssnakelike monssters,” Kaia explained.

“Useful if I have a best friend who’s half snake,” I said.

“That’ss right!” Kaia chimed.

Together we made our way towards the Mess Hall, and on the way we passed a beautiful but odd-looking stone fountain with a marble bench circling it. It had a sculpture of a gigantic lion, some kind of goat-snake-lion hybrid, and a multi-headed dinosaur holding up a plate that dribbled water out into the base of the fountain, where I could see little gold and silver coins shimmering at the bottom.

“The children of Typhon and Echidna,” Theo said when he saw me staring at the sculpture.

“The Nemean Lion, the Chimera, and the Hydra?” I guessed.

“You got it,” Kaia answered me. “We’ve got thiss fountain because they’re ssome of the only monssters that aren’t at leasst part human; they don’t have kidss. But it’ss supposed to repressent dual-bloodss as a sspecies, and kids throw coins in for their parents.”

“Is that the rule for dual-bloods? That the monster parent has to be at least part human?” I inquired. “Because I sure hope the Clazmonian Sow doesn’t have any kids. If it does, I already feel real sorry for them.”

Kaia cracked up with laughter and Theo kind of chuckled.

“Yeah,” Kaia said. “At leasst part human. That makess the Minotaur children, Harpy children, and the Sphinx children ssome of the mosst actual monsster-like of the dual-bloodss.”

Theo bit his lip and nodded earnestly. I wondered if the fact that he’s one quarter cow is a sensitive topic for him.

I took a last look at the intriguing fountain, admiring the softness in the sculpted monsters’ eyes, despite, you know, them being monsters. _I bet they’re just like that in real life, too_ , I thought. As long as you’re not a demigod trying to stab them with a sword, they’re probably not as mean as the stories make them out to be.

Kaia, Theo, and I started walking again.

“So... how do you... know so much about Greek mythology?” Theo asked me.

“Oh, I’ve always loved the Greek myths.” I put my hands in my pocket, only to remember that one of them was still burning beneath its bandage, and took that one out again. “I have a huge book about them at home. It’s pretty much the only book I’ve ever enjoyed reading.”

“It’ss true,” Kaia stated. “Sshe _hatess_ bookss.”

“How do _you_ know the myths?” I asked Theo.

Theo shrugged, and I could almost see him sinking back into his shyness. “I... well... learned about my... uh... parentage... when I was pretty young. I... kind of grew up here, so I knew all along... about them being... real. They... well... they were never just myths to me.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t want to question him further, because it seemed like a conversation he didn’t feel like having, for some reason. Instead I asked him, “So, who’s your favorite hero?”

Next to me, Kaia flinched a little and scowled.

“I’ve never really... thought about it,” Theo replied, honestly. “I’ve... always been so focused on the monsters. What about you?”

“Oh, I’ve always liked Theseus. Except for the whole abandoning my namesake, the princess Ariadne, on some island. And... being forgetful and making his dad jump off a palace roof... and also killing your dad that one time. Sorry about that; no offense. I guess Theseus was a little stupid, too.”

“That’s alright.” Theo grinned. “All the heroes... are at least little stupid.”

“A _little_?” Kaia scoffed. “More like _a lot_ sstupid.”

“You must really hate these demigods,” I told her.

Kaia gave me a look. “They were literally created to kill me. Of coursse I hate them.”

I put my hands up. “I can’t argue with that.”

We turned down the path that ran next to the basketball court. A few teenagers were dribbling a ball around each other at lightning-fast speeds. They must’ve been brothers and sisters, because they all had the same silver-blond hair and pale skin. They were flying around the court faster than I could keep track of them, and I don’t even mean that figuratively. Some of the teenagers were literally flying.

“Venti kids,” Theo whispered to me. “Children of storm spirits.”

“That’s crazy,” I muttered back. “But at least I can cross one name off my list of possible monsters mamas. I think I would know if I could fly.”

“Just a few of them can do that,” Theo explained to me. “Some are more powerful than others.”

Just then, a boy with long black hair ran up to the basketball players. I could see him shout something at them frantically, and the game stopped for a minute, some of the teenagers hovering in mid air with mist swirling around their feet. The dark-haired boy asked them something and they all shrugged and went back to their game. He started jogging towards us.

“What’ss up, Flint?” Kaia greeted him.

“Oh, thank the gods,” he said. “Look, Kaia. Another man-eating horse got out of the stables. I need your help, right now!”

“Okay, okay, calm down.” Kaia turned to me and Theo. “I gotta go take care of thiss. Theo, make ssure Ari doessn’t get into trouble while I’m gone,” she told him, grinning.

“Um... alright... what?”

“Good!” she announced, slithering after Flint, her two snake legs like sandpaper against the dirt. “Ariadne, I’ll come find you after dinner. Ssee you!”

She and Flint raced down another path, shouting after a man-eating horse named Gumdrop.

“See you later!” I called after her. “Hey, isn’t a man-eating horse on the loose kinda dangerous?" I asked Theo.

“Don’t worry. They don’t eat dual-bloods... They like demigods, though.”

“Well, that’s handy.”

“We should probably... go in,” he said, gesturing to the big building next to us.

The dining hall was a long, brick structure. There were tall stained glass windows lining the walls, a ways up on the building. From the inside, I could hear chatting and talking and even some clattering that sounded suspiciously like breaking glass.

I nodded to Theo and he pushed open the big double-doors to the Mess Hall. Light from huge chandeliers that hung from the high ceiling of the building washed over us.

In two neat rows on either side of the long room were rectangular tables, like in the cafeteria at my school, except instead of hard benches, there were a variety of different mismatched chairs positioned randomly around the tables. Some of them were made of lighter or darker wood, some had cushions, and some were even missing legs and wobbled back and forth. The tables left a walkway down the center to a kind of raised platform at the far end of the building, like a stage.

On the inside, the stained glass windows were even more beautiful. Just like the fountain outside, they depicted the monsters from Greek mythology. I spotted one window portraying beautiful women singing on an island to brain-washed sailors. The Sirens. Another showed a group of strange-looking vampire women. They appeared to have mismatched legs; one looked almost bronze, the other was hooved, like a donkey's.

There were more, too, but I could barely soak it all in before Theo said, “I... uh... usually just sit with my siblings.”

“Alright,” I replied. “Lead the way.”

He made his way through the tables, weaving around noisy campers that seemed to be trying to eat, talk, and laugh all at the same time.

One boy with a grin plastered on his face, slitted green eyes, and scales covering half his face tried to trip Theo with his foot, but he just skipped over the boy’s leg, telling me, “Watch your step.”

I followed Theo soundlessly to a table with more huge kids that all looked startlingly like him. I had no doubt that they were his brothers and sisters. They all had the same round eyes and square shoulders, but let me tell you this: Theo was _small_ compared to these kids.

While Theo was shy and slight, his siblings were more of what I thought a stereotypical child-of-the-Minotaur would act like. They were loud and big and looked like they would bash their heads together in their spare time. They spoke mostly in grunts to each other as they shoveled food into their mouths.

Theo and I sat on the far side of the long table, near the wall. I looked up at the stained glass above us. The picture in the glass pieces was a scene of a boy in a white tunic. At his feet lay a dead bull. Or a man. I really couldn't tell, until I realized it must be the Minotaur. That meant the hero in white must be Theseus.

In the background, a girl with long black hair stood holding a spool of red yarn. Ariadne.

Theo saw me staring. “I suppose being named after one helps, too.”

“Helps what?” I asked.

“To enjoy the Greek myths.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess so,” I agreed. “I think the princess Ariadne in the myths was really clever. She figured out the maze, and helped Theseus figure it out, too. Without her, he never would’ve been a hero in the first place. I’ve always liked being named after her.”

“And she was mortal,” Theo added. “She wasn’t even supposed to... be special or anything... but she helped Theseus anyway... despite being a stupid demigod.” He gave me a shy smile.

Another Minotaur kid, one of Theo's brothers, turned to us. "Hey little bro, who's the girl?"

“Ariadne,” Theo replied simply, like he wanted to spend the least amount of time possible talking to his brother. “Undetermined.”

“Hey, no way!” the other Minotaur kid responded, his mouth full of food. “You’re the one they had holed up in the Sick Bay for days from that scythian dracaena venom.” He leaned over the table and held out his hand.

“That’s me,” I remarked, shaking his hand, which almost engulfed all of mine due to how big it was.

He swallowed his food. “Call me Linus,” he said. “Welcome to Camp.”

“Thanks.”

Linus went back to eating his food, and I turned back to Theo, who was looking at the stained glass again. Theseus seemed to be staring down at us, even though the piece that was supposed to be his face was a solid, featureless fragment of glass.

“How about you?” I questioned Theo, who seemed much more lost in the glass scene than I was.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “What?”

"Have you ever met your dad?"

He paused for a moment and then shook his head. "No... a lot of kids here haven't."

"Wow, really? I bet demigods get to meet their parents. Being gods and all, you'd think they'd have all the time in the world to visit them."

"I bet..."

"So, where are all the demigods, anyway?"

"They... have some camp somewhere. Just like ours."

“Do you hate the demigods, like Kaia?” I asked.

Theo looked back down at his plate, which, like mine, had magically filled up with pizza the moment we sat down.

He leaned towards me a little and mumbled, “Honestly?”

“Yeah, duh,” I whispered back.

“I... don’t really know.” He lifted one shoulder in an indifferent shrug. “Everyone here hates them, some even more than Kaia.”

I, personally, found that particular statement hard to believe at the time.

“It’s a natural grudge, I guess,” Theo continued. “Killing our monster parents and all."

“I’d say that’s a pretty good reason to hate someone,” I replied.

“Yeah... except...” Theo trailed off.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s nothing. Forget I said... anything.”

“Um... alright.”

Theo took a bite of his pizza as if to stop himself from saying anything else.

Meanwhile, I was too nervous to eat. I started drumming my fingers on the table.

Today had brought a lot to take in. I tried to go through everything new I’d learned about the world I thought I knew—but obviously didn’t—in my head. My best friend was part snake and could poison people by biting them. I’d experienced that first hand. The Greek gods from the stories were real, and even though I had no genuine proof of that, something deep down inside me kind of wanted it to be true. I was currently at a summer camp for the children of Greek monsters. If that wasn’t just about the coolest thing that had ever happened to me, I didn’t know what was. I mean, I was sitting across from a son of the freaking Minotaur!

“Um... Ariadne...”

I snapped my head back up when I realized I’d been spacing out. My finger-tapping had turned into hand-drumming on the tabletop, making the silverware bounce.

“Oh... sorry,” I said. “Apparently I haven’t had my Adderall in more than a couple of days; I get kind of jumpy if my dad doesn’t remind me to...”

Wait...

I almost cursed out loud.

“What?” Theo asked.

“My dad!” I nearly shouted.

A wave of something that I will only admit here was guilt washed over me. I had been so freaking caught up in all this new Greek-gods-are-real stuff that I had forgotten all about my _mortal_ parent.

“Oh man,” I gulped, putting my head in my hands and twisting my fingers through my hair. “He doesn’t even know where I am! I wonder if he thinks I was kidnapped or something. I mean, I kind of was... Oh gods, I bet he thinks I ran away.”

“Ariad—”

“ _And_ I was supposed to be grounded when Kaia came and got me from my house! I am literally the worst daughter ever.” I put my forehead on the table. “This whole thing is a chaotic disaster.”

“Ariadne... I... uh...” Theo stammered uncertainly, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to go about comforting me. “Try to... calm down. We’ll get everything... sorted out with your dad.”

I lifted my head up, and found Theo with his eyebrows knitted together and his big eyes filled with worry.

“Okay,” I trembled. “But, do you think maybe I could just call him or something? And explain everything? You wouldn’t happen to have a cell phone, would you?”

“I... um...” Theo shook his head. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“I’ll... help you find one, though,” he reassured. “As soon as possible. After...”

Theo trailed off, his eyes sliding over to the front of the room, where the raised stage-like area was. I realized the room had gotten a lot quieter. What were they anticipating?

“Good evening, camperss!” a thundering voice addressed us.

The hissing speaker was met with cheers and shouts and fists banging on tables.

“Who is that?” I questioned.

“It’s Lamia... She’s the... camp director.”

“Oh.” I strained my neck to see over kids’ heads to get a glimpse of her.

“As for announcementss for tonight,” Lamia continued. “Firsst, paintball is sstill on for thiss Ssaturday night—”

Before she could continue, cheers erupted from the campers.

“And, like usual, the teamss will be Bulls versuss Ssnakes.”

That comment brought up jeers and taunts from each side of the room, especially from the bigger, rowdier Minotaur kids, and those derisions brought equally heavy responses from the other side of the room. I didn't know people could get so worked up about paintball.

"Come on, that’ss enough," Lamia called, her voice bouncing around the room. It only took those few words from her to quiet everyone down. I could see just enough in between the heads of campers to recognize that she gave us a knowing grin, and then continued cheerfully, "Let'ss ssave the fighting for Ssaturday. As I was ssaying, there is another big announcement for tonight.”

Campers all around whispered to each other. Some pointed my way.

"Yes, I'm ssure you've heard. We have a new camper with uss! Sshe's actually been in the Ssick Bay for a few days; we can thank Kaia for that."

Everybody laughed.

"Come on up, Ariadne,” Lamia said, welcomingly.

For a second or two, I was frozen in place. I wasn't expecting her to call me up to introduce myself.

"Ariadne," Theo whispered.

Forcing my legs to get me on my feet, I soundlessly moved to the front of the room. I subconsciously tucked my hair behind my ear and straightened my shirt. It was absolutely silent and, even without looking, I knew that all eyes were on me.

When I finally reached the front and climbed the steps to the stage, I got my first good look at Lamia. She was obviously a snake woman, like Kaia, but instead of having two snake bodies for legs, she only had one, with a neon green T-shirt with the words “Camp Echidna” on it on her upper half. Lamia appeared younger than I imagined her to be, maybe in her thirties. Something told me she was actually much older than that, though. Her eyes gave it away, I think. I guessed she must be several thousand years old. _Maybe she’s even been killed before, and has reformed, just like Kaia had explained_ , I thought. _How many lifetimes has this snake lady lived?_

Despite the fangs, Lamia had a kind smile. It gave me the courage to climb the steps to the stage. I looked out on all the other campers and scanned the crowd finding a few familiar faces, but noticing that Kaia still wasn't back yet.

“How about you tell your name to everyone?" she requested simply.

Her voice made me feel like she was speaking just to me, without the extra crowd sitting and watching us. It made me feel less nervous.

"I'm Ariadne Weaver."

Polite clapping sounded from the campers. Were these really the same people who had been shouting insults at each other just a minute ago?

"Regular or undetermined?" someone called from the crowd.

Lamia answered for me. "Undetermined."

A few campers groaned, but most just nodded with approval.

Lamia clapped her hands together twice, snapping everyone back to attention. "Okay then, you all know the way thingss work from here on out. But for Ariadne'ss ssake, and for anyone who hass had _trouble_ remembering the rules in the past, I'll explain again." She eyed a few mischievous-looking campers in the audience and cleared her throat. "To follow our Latin rootss, we do thingss Roman-sstyle here. Because Ariadne is sstill undetermined, sshe will be _probatio_ until sshe proves herself to the camp or is claimed by her monster parent. Until then, ssomeone must repressent Ariadne.

"As Ariadne'ss repressentative, you will be _responssible_ for her. Anything sshe does wrong, you will also be punished for. If sshe is chosen to lead a quest, you musst go with her. Anyone can volunteer; a camper, a dracaena, anybody. Sso, with that, who wishes to repressent Ariadne Weaver?"

Silence. No one. Not a single freaking person stood up to represent me.

 _Do I really look that much like a trouble maker? Do people not trust me?_ I asked myself. _Wow, Ariadne. You need to work on a more outgoing image for yourself and be nicer when your half-snake best friend is introducing you to fellow campers._

I wished Kaia were there. She would've volunteered to represent me.

My stomach lurched as I scanned the crowd; everybody just looked at me. I spotted Theo at his table, but I knew he wouldn’t stand up. He was fidgeting in his seat, his brothers and sisters eyeing him worriedly. I don’t really know why, but the entire pathetic scene made me laugh. Well, it was more of a half lopsided grin than an actual smile due to me trying to hide it up on stage. Then I remembered my predicament. Just as I was about to run off the stage screaming, someone stood up.

“I, Chaos Avers, volunteer to represent Ariadne Weaver.”

It was the tall boy that wrapped up my arm and came to get me from the Sick Bay; Chaos, with his hood still up and his sunglasses still on, standing up a little less than straight among similarly slouching hoodie-clad friends that I assumed were his brothers and sisters.

“Wonderful,” Lamia exclaimed, clapping her hands together again. Everyone else started clapping too.

I nodded at Chaos but his face remained void of expression. He sat down again, some of his friends smiling at him and clapping him on the back.

Lamia wrapped up her announcements with a simple, “Welcome to Camp, Ariadne.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a haiku  
> About what a lil' cutie  
> Theo Kamos is


	4. Chapter 4

I was surprised when I managed to make it back to my seat without falling over. I hadn’t been that nervous in my entire life.

Theo didn’t say anything when I sat down so hard in my seat I made the table shake.

“Quite the experience, isn’t it?” Linus, Theo’s brother, asked me from farther down on the table.

I scratched at the bandage on my arm. “Yeah. That was... something.”

“But Chaos Avers stood to represent you,” Linus said. “He’s a cool guy. If you stick around Camp, you’ll probably get some sword fighting lessons from him.”

“Oh. Nice.”

I didn’t know why I wasn’t totally ecstatic about the fact that’d I’d be learning about sword fighting, but for some reason my stomach was still turning from being up on the stage and standing in front of everyone.

Theo mumbled something across the table.

I replied, “What?”

“I said... sorry.” He shrugged. “For... not standing up.”

Laughing, I said, “Hey, that’s okay. It’s no big deal.”

Theo didn’t answer, so I just stuffed some more pizza in my face. I wondered if I had said something to make him mad.

“Hey, that was great, new girl,” a voice said from behind me. “Nice performance.”

Theo visibly flinched.

I turned and saw the really cocky boy from before, who’d stopped to talk to me and Chaos outside the Sick Bay; the one with the pretty golden eyes. Behind him was a group of ditsy-looking giggling girls.

“Thanks,” I said, flatly. “Ruin... Abaddon, right?”

He sauntered up to stand at the end of our table, looking from me to Theo, but not breaking his shining smile. “No problem,” he replied coolly. “And, the princess Ariadne, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Drop the ‘princess’ part, and you’re good to go.”

“I remember when I first got here,” Ruin explained, ignoring me. “Didn’t know who my mom was, so I was a _probatio_ too, and I had to get someone to represent me just like you did.” He chuckled to himself and picked at his fingernails. “Except, I didn’t have to stay up there for quite so long. There were a bunch of people who stood up to represent me.”

I got the feeling that the “bunch of people” had something to do with the crowd of flighty girls standing behind him.

“Nice narrative, Ruin,” a monotone voice sounded from behind him. “You can tell it again during story time at the Psychiatric Institute for the Extremely Self-Absorbed.”

Ruin’s grin didn’t falter, but his eyes cast a little glare towards the ground. He said cheerfully, “Speaking of representatives, good luck with this one, Ariadne.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at Chaos without even turning to look at him.

Chaos sighed. “Ruin, don’t you have somewhere to be? Mesmerizing people with that _ever-so-charming_ voice of yours? Making trapezes everywhere jealous of that ridiculous swing in your step?”

Ruin’s company of pretty girls followed him as he scowled and meandered away with a somewhat forced prance, looking very ticked off that Chaos had gotten the last word, even though I was beginning to suspect that this must be something that happened quite often between them.

“Sorry about that,” Chaos told me. “Anyway, are you done with your dinner, Ariadne?”

I looked down at my pizza. I’d barely touched it, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. “Yeah, I’m done. Why?”

“Living arrangements. I represent you, so you’re supposed to be living in the marble barracks with us,” he explained, gesturing to his brothers and sisters already making their way out of the Mess Hall.

I remembered my first good view of Camp Echidna from up on the hill on the Sick Bay’s front porch. There had been two big lodge-like structures side by side in the valley; one made from white stone like an old Greek temple, and one made from rough wood that might have been called a shack if it weren’t the size of a small dormitory. Kaia hadn’t quite gotten around to showing me that side of Camp.

Even though I hadn’t said anything, Chaos must’ve seen the look on my face because he just sighed and remarked, “Kaia is really bad at doing tours of Camp, isn’t she?”

“I guess so,” I stated.

Come to think of it, Kaia hadn’t explained any of this “ _probatio_ ” stuff, either, much less the living arrangements for all the campers. I looked over at Theo, who had had a pained look on his face ever since Ruin had made his way over to us. I didn’t blame him. Ruin Abaddon was even worse than my annoying lab partner, Chloe Adeline Everly, from science class. Now that I think about it, her and Ruin would’ve made really great friends.

“Alright,” I said to Theo. “I guess I’ll see you around, then?”

He ducked his head and spoke even quieter than normal. “Yeah... see you...”

Chaos gestured for me to come with him and sped off, leaving me to work my way through the campers that were still eating. Chaos weaved in and around tables and chairs, but unlike Theo, no one tried to trip him. People greeted Chaos with grins rather than smirks, and he gave stoic little nods back at them. He took long strides that were hard to keep up with on my short legs, but I was fast enough not to lose him in the crowd.

When we met up with Chaos’s siblings at the entrance, he held the door open for everyone as they filed out into the night. It had gotten dark really quickly, but despite the lack of light, Chaos and a lot of his brothers and sisters all kept their sunglasses on.

Chaos and I ambled towards the back of the group, letting some of the older-looking campers lead the way.

I looked at Chaos. “Uh... thanks for, you know, standing up to represent me, or whatever,” I offered, awkwardly.

Chaos shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I represent a lot of new kids.”

“Okay... cool, I guess.”

For some reason, his comment made me feel less... significant. I reminded myself that I was just another new camper to a lot of people, including Chaos. Just because I had rode in with Kaia—who seemed popular enough—and survived something that apparently a lot of people didn’t usually survive, didn’t mean I was automatically accepted here. I had to remember to make an impression, just like if it was the first day of school. Except... this wasn’t just some regular school. It was a camp for _children of Greek monsters_. I had to figure out my surroundings first, get my bearings.

“What’s with the shades indoors?” I questioned the group. “Are you, like, blind?”

“No,” Chaos replied.

Some of the other kids walking with us smirked.

“Okay...” I decided to change the subject. “So, what does _probatio_ even mean?” I asked Chaos.

“Nothing, really. It's just another name for a new camper. The Roman camp takes ranks more seriously, though. But you don't have to worry about that here.”

“Roman camp?”

“For the demigods. There are two; one for Romans and one for Greeks. The gods keep them separated though, for reasons that involve not wanting to start World War Three.”

“Demigods are that powerful, huh?”

“Or that _stupid_ ,” one of Chaos’s brothers chimed in.

Chaos didn’t have a response to that comment.

I just nodded my head. "And, there's a difference between Greek and Roman demigods?"

“The Romans are very serious and dedicated to tradition,” Chaos explained. “The Greeks are more _remissa_... relaxed.”

"So, is this camp for only half Greek monsters, or Roman, or what?"

"I guess you could say it's for both. The monsters are pretty much the same in each culture, so it doesn't matter so much like with the gods, who are really different. We mix the two mindsets together a lot. Speaking both ancient Greek and Latin, for example; stuff like that."

“Not to mention nobody cares enough about us to build _two whole camps_ for the no-good dual-bloods,” another one of Chaos’s siblings chimed in.

"That's interesting," I remarked to Chaos, ignoring that last comment. “So, if _probatio_ is just something the Romans take seriously, then why do we need representatives?”

“It's just a tradition. Lamia probably would've represented you if no one else did. It's happened before...” Chaos paused, thinking of what to say. “But I wanted to spare you the trouble.”

“But you'll still be punished if I get in trouble, though?”

“Yeah.”

I grinned and looked at Chaos out of the corner of my eye. “You worried I’ll mess something up?”

“You haven’t given me any reason to discredit your regard for following rules as of yet,” he answered. “Then again, you’re a dual-blood, which means by mere definition you’re more likely to end up burning down a building or blowing a crater into the side of the cliff sooner or later.”

A couple of kids laughed and high-fived each other as if recalling a funny memory.

I grinned. “Then why did you feel like standing up and taking responsibility for my actions?”

One of Chaos’s siblings chuckled. “Because he’s just that nice,” she said, coming up and putting an arm around his shoulders.

It was tall girl, wearing a navy blue hoodie similar to the rest of the group’s style. Except, I noticed that she was one of the few that didn’t wear sunglasses. The girl smiled at me as she attempted to dig her knuckles into Chaos’s head through his hood, but he managed to squirm out of her hold.

“Would you stop that!” he hissed, although I could see the corners of his mouth quirk up just a little. The girl let out a laugh, but let Chaos walk ahead of us a little bit.

As we turned down another dirt path together towards the two tall buildings lit up with torches, I guessed, "So, you’re Chaos’s siblings. You all live in one big lodge?"

I looked up at the two large buildings. The dormitory-like structures cast long shadows out onto their porches.

"Yup," the tall girl—who was somehow able to put a six-foot-tall Chaos in a headlock and was apparently his sister—confirmed. She came up to walk in step with me.

While she twisted her long dark hair over one shoulder, I got a closer look at her face. She looked like she was at least half Asian, and seemed maybe a couple years older than me. The only thing that interrupted her pleasant appearance was a long scar that ran down the side of her cheek and disappeared into her shirt in back.

"Oh, don't let the scar scare you.” She held out her hand. “I'm Elise.”

“Ariadne,” I said, shaking her hand gently as to not hurt my injured arm.

She smiled back at me. And she had _fangs._ Not as long as Kaia's or Lamia's, but her canine teeth definitely stuck out more than an average person's.

"Nice teeth, by the way." I beamed back. "I wish I had cool fangs like you."

"Wow, that's a first!” one of Chaos’s brothers exclaimed. “Someone who actually _wants_ to be a snake-head?"

Everyone around us laughed. I was trying to understand how Chaos’s brothers and sisters could be so cynical and also really amusing at the same time.

"What's a snake-head?" I remembered that I had heard Ruin call Chaos something like that back at the Sick Bay, but I hadn’t paid any attention to it. When Ruin had said it, it had sounded like an insult.

Another sister piped up, "Gods, haven't you guessed already?”

I hesitated. Did the nickname have something to do with their parentage? Of course it did. They were all at least half brothers and sisters, so their nickname must have something to do with their monster parent.

I thought for just a second, running through the names of famous Greek monsters. When I finally recalled the myth, I became suddenly wary of the potential power surrounding me.

“Medusa?” I squeaked.

“Ding ding ding! Correct!" Elise cheered.

“I can't believe I didn't figure that out before."

“Like I said back at the Sick Bay,” Chaos reminded me, falling back to walk on the opposite side of me from Elise. “There are a lot of things people don’t know when they first get here.”

"So, can you... you know..." I trailed off, not quite knowing if I should ask or not.

"Turn people to stone?" Elise raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, that."

“Certainly. Under the right conditions, of course.”

I asked curiously, “Conditions?”

“Yeah,” Elise started to explain, “like, if we get our blood pumping fast enough and we’ve got a lot of adrenaline in our systems. If we think we’re in danger, or we get really excited, or we get really angry. Stuff like that.”

“We all wear the glasses occasionally for security reasons, but a couple of us have to wear the glasses all the time,” explained a brother. “Most of us are just forced to wear goggles when we're playing paintball or practicing combat, and that’s it."

"Lucky," I heard Chaos mumble.

“Okay, I think I get it.” I looked around at all of the teenagers wearing shades even though it was pitch dark out. “Then, it’s more of a defense mechanism, instead of just all the time like the real Medusa.”

“Exactly,” Elise responded, nodding. “A lot of us have learned to control it, for the most part, but there are a few of us who are way stronger than others...”

As Elise trailed off, Chaos stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket and kicked a stone on the dirt path.

“Got it,” I muttered.

I wondered how hard it must be for those specific children of Medusa to have to go about life wearing sunglasses twenty-four, seven. They could never look anyone right in the eye, and their whole world would be literally darker. I couldn’t imagine how dull that must be.

As we neared the front steps to the marble lodge, Elise announced, "Welcome to the _dimidium domus_ ," breaking the silence.

I stopped and looked up at the huge building. I had seen it from a distance, outside the Sick Bay, but it looked even bigger up close. It was easily two stories high, probably with tall ceilings, too. Everything was marble with old-fashioned torches attached to the walls, but also an electric bug-zapper hung from the porch ceiling with moths fluttering around it. Inside there were voices and laughter, and when I looked up, I saw a few kids sitting in window sills reading or drawing quietly. The porch had pillars all around it and the doorway had carvings in what looked like Greek and Latin etched into it.

"Whoa," I awed.

"Yeah!” Ruin's obnoxious voice sounded from next to me. “A lot better than the Minotaur's shack, am I right?" He sauntered past us and into the building.

"Watch out Ruin, you'll trip over your own ego," Chaos mumbled, half-heartedly.

"No way. _He_ lives here?" I hissed to Elise.

“Where else would he live? He's a son of a Siren," she replied.

"Oh, so that's why—"

I was interrupted by a herd of girls swooning after Ruin.

"Exactly," Elise said, slyly.

Chaos grunted something I couldn’t hear and crossed his arms.

"Oh, calm down little brother," Elise teased.

We all entered the barracks and made our way through bunk beds that were placed in neat, even rows along the walls and down the center of the building. It was basically one big room with pillars to hold up the high ceiling. The walls were mostly blank, aside from the occasional picture or poster on the space behind a camper's bunk. Well... and the weapons and shields on display _everywhere_.

Somewhere, someone cranked up a radio and blasted music throughout the lodge. Everyone started mingling and dancing and passing out cans of soda that I was pretty sure weren’t supposed to be allowed.

A barking sound came from behind me, and a second later, a brown labrador retriever flew by me, rushing between the legs of kids, who just laughed and tried to see what the dog was chasing. The dog was so fast, it was almost like just a blur of brown fur rocketing down the aisles between the bunk beds.

“That isn’t just _any_ chocolate lab, is it?” I inquired.

“Nope.” Chaos crouched down and tapped the floor. “Laelaps, come here, girl!”

In a flash, the brown lab was back, sitting obediently in front of Chaos. He scratched her ears and her tongue lolled out.

I was stunned. “Wait. Laelaps, as in, the dog who is destined to always catch whatever she’s hunting?”

“Well, technically this Laelaps is just a descendant of the original Laelaps. The original was turned to stone by Zeus and then made into a constellation. But our Lae is definitely still pretty fast.”

One of the younger campers, who looked maybe seven or eight, came up with a red rubber chew toy in the shape of a Greek-style sword in his hand, saying, “Lae, fetch!” and hurled the toy sword down the length of the room over the heads of unsuspecting teenagers.

As quickly as she had come, Laelaps was off again, weaving in between the campers’ feet.

The entire place was packed with campers who were filing in from dinner. There was a diverse spectrum of kids with monster-like features such as scales, slitted eyes, abnormally pale skin, and fangs. In a way, the fact that I didn’t have anything to mark me as half-monster made me feel left out. I didn’t have cool fangs like Elise, or the ability to turn people to stone, either. I wondered what cool powers came with being the daughter of whoever my monster parent was.

I thought again about my dad. Now that I had remembered him, I couldn’t stop fretting over what he might be thinking about me. He’d be worried about me. Probably.

When I was younger, I was that kid that threatened to run away from home on a daily basis. Like, all little kids think about running away at one point or another in their lives, but apparently I used to take it really seriously. The way my dad explained it, it sounded like I’d just disappear off into the woods behind my house randomly during the day with a backpack full of peanut butter sandwiches and my yo-yo, and he’d get neighbors to help look for me. He’d find me hiding up in some tree, and he’d bring me home, and the next day I’d do it all over again.

 _“Eventually I just got used to it,”_ he would say, laughing. _“I didn’t worry too much after a while.”_

I had grown out of trying to run away a long time ago, but I thought about how much he must be worrying now. Did he think that I’d run away because of the fight we’d had earlier? If that was the case, he was probably beating himself up about it pretty bad right about now.

I suddenly knew I had to talk to my dad. Even if I couldn’t explain everything to him right now about the gods or the monsters, I needed to let him know I was okay.

Gravitating towards Chaos, who had settled into a space between two bunk beds, I scratched the bandage on my arm.

“Do you need some help with that?” he asked me, gesturing to my arm.

I looked down. Some of the bandage was torn and falling apart where I had been clawing at it all day. “Um... yes.”

Chaos smirked, unzipping his jacket and bringing out a roll of white cloth from the inside pocket. His hood fell off his head for the first time I’d seen him, revealing close-cropped blond hair and an angular face that I hadn’t been able to notice before.

“Do you carry around medical supplies with you all the time?” I questioned him, holding out my arm for him to wrap.

“Medical personnel, gotta medically provide.”

“What else do have to haul around?”

He shrugged while he starting unraveling the shredded cloth from around my arm. “Stuff for pain, more bandages, burn ointment. I’m like a stop-and-go school nurse.”

“Oh. Cool. And, do you happen to keep a cell phone, by any chance?”

“Are you asking for my number?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I just was wondering if I could use it to call my dad.”

Chaos simpered. “Yeah, I have a phone. I don’t use it much, though. It’s not a smart idea here at Camp.”

“Why’s that?”

“Dual-bloods have this knack for being able to listen in on phone calls.”

“What?”

“Well, monsters themselves can do it best. It’s a good way to find demigods, after all. But, we inherit some of the ability.”

“That’s never happened to me before. I can’t just _hear_ people’s phone calls.”

“It’ll probably develop more now that you know what you are. Just like any super powers you might have hidden away in your subconscious.”

“That’s pretty cool, honestly,” I admitted.

“Yeah, except I wouldn’t put it past some of the kids here to be polite enough to tune your private conversations out.”

I watched Chaos’s hands go back and forth, weaving the new strip of cloth around my gross poisoned arm.

“I guess I’ll just have to wait to talk to my dad, then,” I said, tiredly.

Chaos took my hand and tied the end of the bandage around my wrist. “Hey, don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll find a way for you to talk to him soon.”

“Thanks.” I looked up at him, not quite seeing through the darkness of his glasses to make out his eye shape.

He smiled at me, kindly.

“No fangs, I see,” I told him.

“Yep.” He scratched the back of his head. “Elise got that rare blessing.”

“And you’re a blondie,” I continued.

He laughed. “What were you expecting? Snakes?”

“Not sure, exactly.” I shrugged. “So what’s with the dorms? Why do they look so different?”

"There are just the two barracks," Chaos explained. "One for the children of more humanoid monsters, like the Sirens and Medusa. The other lodge is for more... _creature-like_ dual-bloods." I could tell he was trying to put it nicely.

"Like the _Minotaur_ ,” a sneer sounded from behind us, not as nicely.

I swear... I was starting to think that Ruin’s voice got more annoying every time it snuck up on me.

“Gods,” I mumbled to Chaos. “Does he just follow you around, looking to irritate someone?”

“I’ve known him for upwards of seven years, and let me just tell you that this is _less_ annoying than usual. He must’ve had a busy day.”

“I’m right here,” Ruin snapped.

“Sorry, I think I’m blind to morons now.” Chaos’s face went blank. “My optic nerve is now incapable of sending electrical impulses to my brain that include complete _tools_.”

“Ha-ha,” Ruin remarked, flatly. “Very funny, Serpent Skull.”

“What are you even doing over here?” Chaos asked, tiredly.

“Calm down, _Stone Stare_. Just passing through.”

Chaos suddenly stepped forward and squared his shoulders, his shoes squeaking on the marble floor. Ruin took a tiny step back.

“Exactly how many nicknames do you have for him, Ruin?” I smirked, jokingly.

Chaos’s fists clenched, but he ignored my comment. “Say that again, Abaddon.”

“Ooh,” Ruin sang, snickering. “I forgot he doesn’t like that one...”

Chaos took another step forward, almost towering over his adversary, but this time Ruin didn’t step down. “I’m getting real tired of that aggravating voice of yours, Ruin,” Chaos told him.

I sensed that this was about to get messy. “Um... Chaos, how about we let the _fatuus_ go in peace, huh?” I was about to grab Chaos and tug him away, when he raised his arm and swung, just barely missing Ruin’s head as the annoying little brat ducked down and then popped back upright, backing away slowly now. Some kids around the two boys backed off, but most grinned and egged the two on, like they were happy for the entertainment.

“And _I’m_ getting real bored of those sunglasses of yours, Snake Brain,” Ruin chimed, gingerly stepping away. “Why don’t you take them off for a couple minutes? Please, for me?”

“Maybe I will,” Chaos snarled, getting ready to take another swing.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Elise belted, suddenly between the two with Chaos’s fist in her hand. She addressed Ruin by saying, “You got a death wish, kid?”

Instead of answering, Ruin just cackled and sauntered away in the opposite direction.

Chaos looked like he was about to go after him, when Elise twisted Chaos’s arm a little too far the wrong way and he snatched it away, cursing at his sister.

“Ariadne, a little help?” she requested.

Snapping back to attention, I grabbed Chaos by the wrist and tried to drag him away, only to have him shake me off and grunt, “I’m fine. Leave me alone.”

The fight in him was gone, along with Ruin, who had disappeared the moment Elise had intervened.

“Wow. Coward, much?” I yelled down the way Ruin had fled.

“Don’t encourage either of them,” Elise said sharply.

“I— I didn’t—” I stammered.

“Yeah, yeah,” Elise acknowledged. “It wasn’t your fault, just don’t... well, he isn’t usually... nevermind.” With that, she sped off in Chaos’s wake, leaving me surrounded by disappointed-looking campers.

A kid with green reptile eyes whined, “Man, I thought for sure Chaos was gonna finally off him,” as if this was something that happened weekly.

“Better luck next time,” I muttered to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chaos and Ruin should really just kiss and make up already.


	5. Chapter 5

That night, I dreamed that I was at a summer camp. But, it wasn’t Camp Echidna; it was a different one.

A single majestic pine tree stood upright on a hill. There was a beautiful strawberry field off to the right. Kids of all ages ran around, having fun. There were even these weird goat-men mixed in with the campers in orange T-shirts. _Satyrs,_ I remembered from my mythology book.

A light breeze ruffled the pine tree’s branches, making something that looked like a shiny sequin throw rug sway on one of the low-hanging boughs.

I caught sight of a girl with curly blonde hair. Her orange T-shirt read: "Camp Half-Blood." I realized this must be one of the demigod camps.

"Hey!" the blonde girl called.

"What is it, Wise Girl?" a boy with sea-green eyes answered her.

"You're on my team for capture the flag, right?"

"Whatever you say. Hey, did Chiron tell you about the mission?"

The girl's voice dropped to a low whisper. "You're not supposed to talk about that here!" she hissed.

"Oh. Sorry," the boy whispered back. "I didn’t know it was a secret. So, did he?"

"Of course he did."

“And he thought we were the best choices to go on this mission because...?”

"Honestly, Seaweed Brain! Don't you pay any attention?"

Seaweed Brain looked embarrassed.

Wise Girl sighed like this was something she was used to, and continued, "We're going because the Mist is—"

A voice brought me back to reality, yelling, “Ariadne, wake up!”

"Ugh. Wha—?" I wiped the sleep away from my eyes and tried to remember where I was.

"Come on, Ari. Combat practice!" Kaia announced loudly, right next to my ear.

_Combat practice?_

I tried rolling over, but the blankets got tangled up in my shirt. I had slept in my clothes because I didn't have any spare pajamas.

"Lemme go back to sleep," I said groggily, plopping my face back onto the pillow.

“No time for sleep,” Elise chimed in, sitting on the floor next to her bunk, braiding one of her little sister’s hair. “Chaos is looking for you, says he needs to check your arm before he teaches you anything about fighting.”

On one hand, I was itching to learn about fighting; but on the other, I didn’t feel like getting out of bed and facing Chaos after last night’s antics. Not to mention my arm was throbbing and my tossing and turning in my sleep had unraveled the bandages again. The wound wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but the skin was still discolored. On second thought... it was probably a good idea to have Chaos look at it.

I groaned and rolled out of bed, tripping over my shoes laying carelessly next to my newly assigned bunk bed. Trying to stand up and blink spots out of my eyes, I considered my surroundings. I had almost forgotten that I was at Camp Echidna, and not back home in my own bed, in my own cramped and dusty bedroom.

The second floor of the dorm was reserved for the girls, and had a high ceiling with blank white walls just like downstairs. Big windows let in the morning light, and strategically placed fans around the room blew cool air around the dorm. The whole set up only reinforced the fact that summer was upon us. I might have been missing my dad a whole lot right about then, but I definitely would not miss being at school. Getting almost killed by my best friend was definitely worth it in exchange for an early start on my summer vacation.

Combing through my dark wavy hair with my fingers, I looked at Kaia, standing there, chewing on her lower lip with her fangs. “How’d that man-eating horse ordeal go?” I asked.

Kaia groaned dramatically. “We were out there like _all night_! Flint looked like he was jusst about ready to drop by the time we got Gumdrop back in her sstable. Ssorry I had to misss your little camp introduction, though.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “It all worked out. Chaos stood up to represent me.”

“Yeah, I heard!” Kaia smiled. “Ssorry I never got around to explaining _probatio_ or anything, too. And, sspeaking of Chaoss, I also heard about lasst night, how there was almosst a fi—”

“ _Speaking of Chaos_ ,” Elise cut in, tying off the braid in her little sister’s hair. She stood up and turned to me. “He’s probably waiting for you, Ariadne.”

“Right,” I replied. “Combat practice.”

“Alright...” Kaia looked a little confused, but she’d never been good at getting hints. She was probably disappointed that she couldn’t hear about the fight. “Let’s go find Chaos.”

I started down the stairs to the first floor of the dorm, when Kaia called for me to wait a second, like usual. I groaned in response like I always do, and stood with my weight on one foot while she caught up to me and carefully begun down the marble stairs, holding the railing tightly as her snake trunks slipped down the steps.

“Wait...” I said, grinning. “This is why you are always telling me to wait for you at the top of the stairs at school? Because of your freaking _snake legs_?”

“Uh... yess.”

I laughed out loud, “How did you even get _up_ the stairs?”

“You don’t want to know how long it took,” she told me, smiling down at me. Her fangs popped out of her mouth. “Jusst be happy that your house is only one sstory high, or elsse I probably wouldn’t be your friend.”

“Oh, this is _great_ ,” I mused, deviously.

“Don’t get any ideass,” Kaia objected. “I’ve alsso got clawss, you know!”

“Alright, alright,” I conceded. “Just hurry up!”

“Don’t make me bite you again.”

I scratched at my poisoned arm some more while I waited for Kaia to make it the rest of the way down.

“ _Thank_ you,” Kaia acknowledged once she was on the ground.

“So, Chaos. Where’s he usually?” I asked her as we made our way out of the barracks.

There were kids milling around in the small field in the middle of Camp; talking, sword fighting, and all that fun stuff.

“He workss at the Ssick Bay mostly, but he might be in the Arena, too.”

I remembered the Arena, the large round building that Kaia had showed me a little bit of yesterday. “Awesome,” I chimed.

“I knew you’d like it here,” Kaia beamed, slithering along the dirt path. “And, I was going to tell you about you being a dual-blood ssoon, by the way. I wassn’t going to keep it a secret forever.”

“It’s okay, really,” I assured. “I probably wouldn’t have believed you about all this if I hadn’t experienced it first hand, anyway.”

“And, I really am ssorry for not warning you about having to sstand up there and—”

“Kaia, really. It’s no big deal,” I told her. “I just—”

“Look,” Kaia continued quickly, nervously wringing her hands. “I forget that you’re new to all of thiss. Mosst of the dual-bloodss I bring in... they already know who they are, and I’m jusst keeping them out of harm’ss way. And we’ve been friendss for so long that I forget that you didn’t know me as half-ssnake until yesterday, too.”

“Calm down, Kaia,” I laughed. “I’m not mad at you.”

Kaia sighed with relief. “Thankss for, like, sstill talking to me.”

“Come on.” I punched her in the arm. “You’re my friend; I wouldn’t stay mad at you. Besides, I feel a little stupid myself for not figuring it out earlier. The whole scythian dracaena thing, I mean.”

Kaia laughed. “I have to ssay, when I firsst met you lasst year, I was ssure the hisss would give it away.”

We laughed, and something nudged my leg. I looked down and saw the brown dog from before, Laelaps, padding along next to us. Her big brown eyes looked up at me.

“Hey,” I cooed to her. “What’s up?”

She barked up at me and I stopped to scratch her ear.

“Sshe must like you,” Kaia wavered. “Sshe never had an affinity towardss me, much.”

“Really?” I knelt down to rub Lae’s belly. “She seems so nice.”

“I’m not really a dog person. Ssnakes are my sspecialty, remember?”

“Figures,” I smirked. “Hey, girl, you wanna help find Chaos with us?” I asked the chocolate lab.

Laelaps jumped up, barked, and sped off up the hill towards the big old house near the cliff.

“I guesss he’ss in the Ssick Bay,” Kaia remarked.

We marched up the hill together, along the road that edged the big cliff that Kaia had mentioned yesterday. I kept forgetting that Camp was right on the ocean, the steep cliff leading right down into powerful waves crashing into rocks at the bottom.

We were almost to the front steps of the Sick Bay, and on the porch I could see the fold-out chalkboard. The message from yesterday had been erased and rewritten, now reading: “A man was rushed to the hospital because he swallowed a five dollar bill. They're keeping him there for observation, but so far there has been no change!”

Off to the right, the cliff jutted out further over the ocean, making it almost a straight drop down into the water. Also on the cliff, there was a lone tree. It was huge, with winding branches that splayed out from the trunk, just pleading with me to be climbed on. The breeze from the ocean made the sturdy tree sway ever so slightly.

“Are we really in the corner of the Bermuda Triangle right now?” I asked excitedly, remembering something Chaos had commented to me the day before.

“That’s right. It’s the Sea of Monsters, and it used to be in the Mediterranean.”

“Let me guess... even the Greek seas move around with western civilization.”

Kaia grinned. “Correct.”

“Man, that is the coolest,” I awed. “So, where’s Mount Olympus now?”

“The Empire Sstate Building.”

“How about the Underworld?”

“There’ss a couple ssecret entrancess, but the official one iss in Los Angeles. Are you okay?”

“What? Yeah!” I was bouncing on my toes, my hands clasped in front of me. “I’m just really excited about all this!”

“Yessterday you were calling it freaky.”

“The only freaky it is, is _freaking awesome_! The Greek myths being real, it’s all so cool. And, I already know so much about the myths. I’m, like, already an expert.”

“I wouldn’t ssay that.”

“Wouldn’t say what?”

I turned and saw Chaos—complete with signature shades and hoodie—trudging down the front steps of the Sick Bay, Laelaps at his heels with her red squeaky-toy Greek-style sword in her teeth.

“That I’m a Greek mythology expert,” I told him as he ambled up to us. I found it hard to look him right in the eyes—or, sunglasses—without thinking about how he could turn me and Kaia to stone with a single glance.

“Oh, really?” he remarked, holding out his hand to me, palm up. “Do you know how to treat a scythian dracaena bite?”

“Well, no,” I admitted, placing my wrist in his hand. “How _do_ you treat it?”

“You don’t.” Chaos started unraveling the few remaining bandages from around my arm. “You wait to see if the person dies or not, and then if they make it, make sure they don’t scratch at the scars too much.” He examined my arm carefully, touching the skin around the bite marks from Kaia’s fangs. “Which I can see I haven’t been doing such a good job of, judging from all the scrapes here.”

“Sorry,” I shrugged. “It’s a pain to have that thing around my arm all the time.”

“Well, you have to keep it on for a little while longer,” Chaos replied, rewrapping my arm snugly and tying the end around my wrist. “Doctor’s orders.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be teaching me about swords or something today?” I asked.

“Maybe if you promise to stop making me rewrap your arm every few hours.”

“Deal,” I said, taking my arm away and stretching my fingers.

I glanced behind Chaos again at the huge tree near the edge of the cliff. The branches were arranged in such a way that made me want to sit up there all day with Kaia and talk like we used to—about cool movies, or annoying kids at school, or stupid stuff our parents did. Well, mostly just the annoying stuff my dad did, because Kaia didn’t ever talk about her family, and now I see that that was because she’s an immortal snake-woman and doesn’t actually have parents. But that didn’t stop me from missing all the cool stuff we used to do in the forest behind my house.

Chaos turned to see what I was looking at, and explained, “It’s called a gumbo limbo tree. _Ridiculum nomine_ , right?”

“Yeah, it’s a weird name.”

“But it’s a lot better than something like a boring pine tree,” he sighed.

I flashed back to my dream of the blonde girl and green-eyed guy. There had been a tall pine tree there, all alone on a hill, kind of like this tree here.

“Pine tree?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah; it’s just something they have at Camp Half-Blood.”

There it was again. _Camp Half-Blood_. I recalled the writing on the orange T-shirts the kids had been wearing in my dream.

“Is that one of the demigod camps that you were talking about?” I asked, cautiously.

“Yess,” Kaia said, scornfully. “The Greek one.”

I took another look at the tree.

“Well, all it needs now is a tire swing,” I remarked.

Chaos smiled. I wanted to ask him about what happened with Ruin last night—and from the looks of it, so did Kaia—but I decided against it. I knew it would be a bad idea to, ahem, _ruin_ Chaos’s good mood. Right now I just wanted to get to know the camp, make some friends, and learn more about the Greek mythology stories being more than just myths; not get people into fights.

“Hm... I’ll see what I can do about that,” Chaos said, considering the tree as if picturing it with a tire swing over one its branches. He turned back to me. “Ready to get your first sword fighting lesson?”

...

Five minutes later, the three of us and Laelaps stood at the entrance to the huge, round building that Chaos—and apparently everyone else—referred to simply as, “The Arena.”

The Arena was impressive, and I stopped to stare at the building before we entered.

“I’ve been here for nearly ten years, Ariadne,” Chaos commented from behind me. “And let me assure you, it’s nothing special.”

“Are you kidding!” I marveled. “Regular summer camps have, like, _maybe_ an archery range, if they trust the kids enough with bows and arrows, and you’re telling me you have an entire arena dedicated to teaching kids how to use real-life deadly weapons, and it’s _nothing special_?”

Chaos shrugged, but I could see a tiny smile play on his lips, showing something along the lines of a sense of pride. Kaia just grinned, showing her fangs.

As we headed into the Arena, I asked Chaos, “Wait, how long did you say you’ve been here?”

“Oh,” he faltered, sticking his hands in his jacket pockets. “Um, ten years, almost. I guess.”

While I gaped at the high ceiling of the Arena, I asked, “Then how old were you when you started coming here in the summer?”

Chaos hesitated at first, then answered, “Five. And, I don’t just come here in the summer. I live here.”

“Like, all the time? You don’t go to school or anything?”

“We have a library.”

I stared at him.

He peered back at me. “What?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “I’m just... jealous.”

Kaia laughed. “You know, now that you’re here, Ari, you can pretty much sstay as long as you want.”

“It _is_ pretty amazing here.” I took another glance through the Arena doors to see all the kids swinging swords around inside.

Chaos ducked his head and muttered something I couldn’t catch. Before I could ask what he had said, Kaia pulled me towards a table of weapons. The inside of the Arena reminded me disturbingly of a school gymnasium. The floor was the same with colored tapes on the ground crisscrossing and circling to form mini courts and rings. There were even wooden bleachers lining the walls.

But I could tell this was no school gym.

My eyes scanned the room. There were straw-filled dummies placed around the arena for target practice. Kids were shredding them to ribbons with knives and swords. People fighting each other, dodging and ducking and rolling over maces and hatchets. Ropes and nets hung from the walls and ceilings to climb. There were also random boxes and walls around for hiding behind and for shooting over with bows. Along one wall, there were tables with weapons adorning them. This was where Kaia took me first.

My hand hovered over a bow and quiver arrows resting almost peacefully on the surface of the rough wood table. Then I caught sight of a set of throwing knives next to a huge two-handed claymore.

“Which one do I get?” I asked Kaia, in awe.

“You’ll get to choosse whichever eventually, right now you’re here to have Chaoss beat you in every type of combat.”

“That’s not very encouraging.”

“I’ve known him all of hiss ten years he’ss been here, and I’ll have you know that he can really do some damage with... well, jusst about any weapon here, really.”

Chaos scratched the back of his head, but didn’t deny any of what Kaia was saying.

“And the besst part is, he’ss the medic,” Kaia continued, jabbing her clawed thumb over her shoulder at Chaos. “Sso if you get him mad, you’d better sstart writing your lasst will and tesstamentss, becausse you can count yoursself out of medical care.”

“Guess I better not get on his bad side, huh?” I laughed.

A crowd of Medusa children that I recognized from last night flooded into the Arena, tossing what looked like pairs of goggles to each other.

“I think I’ve got yours!” one boy called, hurling the goggles at a girl’s head.

“ _Malam pestem_!” the girl shouted back. “Chaos, these are yours!” She tossed a pair of reflecting goggles towards us, Chaos snatching them out of the air.

“That means I must have Elise’s,” he said, pushing the ones he had into his sister’s hands as she passed.

"Thanks lil’ bro." She slipped them on over her head and gingerly flipped a knife from the table over her fingers and into her palm.

“They all look the same to me,” I said to Kaia, watching Chaos tug the goggles that were seemingly identical to all his siblings’ over his short blond hair to rest on his forehead.

“Try telling the resst of the ssnake-headss that.”

Chaos stealthily slipped his sunglasses off his nose and pulled the goggles over his eyes before I even blinked. I could tell that he’d probably had years to perfect that motion.

“When do I get to cut one of those dummies open?” I asked Chaos.

“Rules first,” Chaos stated, adjusting the strap of his goggles.

“Ugh, you and your sstupid ruless.”

“I am very dedicated to Arena safety protocols, Kaia.”

“Oh, come on, Chaoss. Why can’t you be like a regular dual-blood; not following ruless, hating demigodss, all that fun sstuff.”

 _Chaos doesn’t hate the demigods?_ I thought to myself. _That’s news._

“Hey,” Elise cut in. “Don’t be making fun of my little brother, Kaia. Only I can do that.” She jabbed her thumb towards her chest and grinned, her scar stretching over her face and her long canine teeth popping out over her lips.

“The ssnake-heads are ssuckers for ruless, Ari.” Kaia shook her head disapprovingly, as if to say, _You don’t really have to listen to them._

I laughed, but, to be honest, I didn’t really agree with her. I’d only been here about a day, but I’d already had a run-in with a certain son of Medusa threatening to take off his glasses. Don’t get me wrong; I hated guidelines, regulation, the whole shebang. But I got the feeling that the rules might have the slightest bit of necessity to them in this case, considering that there were deadly weapons laying around for anyone to pick up and use, and some kids here literally had murderous glares.

“Let’s hear it, then, Chaos,” I told him. “Tell me about the Laws of the Arena.”

“ _Gratias tibi_ , Ariadne,” he sighed, eyeing Kaia. “First off, for Zeus’s sake, don’t make enemies your first week here. Make some friends first so that at least you’ll have someone on your side if you actually get in a fight. Second, if you hear anything along the lines of ‘code red!’ shut your eyes until you’re given the all-clear.”

“Code red? Like at school when we have to lock the door, turn off the lights, and stay quiet for five whole minutes?”

“I’ve never been to school a day in my life, so I don’t know what you’re talking about, but here, when a code red is called, it means a snake-head’s goggles came off. So, you know, just close your eyes and sit tight. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Chaos mumbled something and walked off. I looked Kaia, but she just shook her head.

I shuffled along after Chaos with Kaia trailing behind and said, “You mutter a lot, don’t you?”

He looked straight at me, his face blank. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he stated.

The three of us walked along the edge of the Arena, looking for a free dummy to practice on when we saw Ruin Abaddon hacking one to pieces nearby, I steered us in the other direction.

“Well, I guesss Chaos’s mumbling iss a lot better than that sstooge,” Kaia said to me, “who sseemss to love the ssound of his own voice.”

Chaos considered this. “True.”

“Sspeaking of Ruin—” Kaia started.

I was about to cut her off, when Chaos sighed and smiled. “Yes, Kaia, our resident golden boy Ruin Abaddon and I almost got into a little _altercation_ last night.”

“Aw! And I misssed it!” Kaia hissed between her fangs, obviously disappointed.

“ _Golden boy_?” I asked.

Chaos pointed to his face. “His eyes.”

“Right.” I needed to help Chaos some up with some better nicknames.

“While we’re on the subject, Ariadne,” Chaos chimed, sticking his thumbs in his belt loops. “You don’t need to help me steer clear of Ruin or avoid the subject because you think I’m gonna go off. I’ve been handling myself for seven years.” Chaos raised his voice, and without looking away from me, he shouted, “Isn’t that right, Ruin!”

“ _Pedicabo longe_ , Snake Skull!” Ruin yelled back from across the room.

Chaos grinned at me, his voice returning to normal, “But thank you anyway.”

I scoffed. “Wipe that look off your face.”

Chaos’s face went completely blank again. “What look?”

Kaia was holding back laughter, I could tell.

“I don’t get him,” I told Kaia jokingly.

“You should just stick around for the summer,” Chaos told me. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually. Want to get started with some long-ranged weaponry?”

We started towards a corner of the Arena where no one was practicing. There were splintery wooden targets with bullseyes painted haphazardly over them hanging on the walls.

“Oh, ssure Chaoss,” Kaia hissed. “Sstart with your sspecialty sso that you can sshow off to your sstudent.”

“Grab me a gun, will you, Ari?” Chaos requested, grinning.

I sauntered over to one of tables lining the walls with a variety of ranged weapons. There were sets of bows and arrows, crossbows and bolts, but also a wide array of modern weapons including pistols and rifles.

“Why do you guys use old weapons _and_ new ones?” I asked, my eyes scanning the table.

“The demigods haven’t quite caught on that guns are much more effective and reliable than bows.”

“Dual-bloodss: one. Half-bloodss: zero!” Kaia called.

“Which gun do you want, Chaos?” I asked him, looking back.

He was standing over by the targets, picking at the paint on one of them. “Anything’s fine.”

I chose one at random, curling my hand around the grip and sliding my finger over the trigger. It was heavy, but not too bad. It was a pistol, but that was just about the only thing I knew about it. Pull the trigger and they shoot; that basically chalked up everything I knew about guns.

“So, you’re gonna teach me how to fire this thing?” I inquired, swinging the gun in my hand around.

“Woah, woah!” Chaos yelped. “Trigger discipline!” He snatched the pistol out of my hands.

“Sorry,” I replied quickly.

Kaia burst out laughing. “Thiss iss going to be a long lessson, Chaoss, trusst me.”

...

Forty-five minutes later, Chaos confirmed what I’d concluded the minute he put the gun back in my hands: I absolutely sucked at long-range combat. I’ll leave it at that, because the details aren’t only not important, but also pretty embarrassing for me. Considering how many times I came close to either breaking the weapon or accidently shooting Chaos, I was surprised when he kept handing me new weapons to try. We’d tested out everything from slingshots to crossbows, and I didn’t seem to excel at a single thing.

I figured that I didn’t really have the patience for long-range stuff. It was all so mechanic to me; robotic, even. I probably would’ve preferred it if it was more fast-paced.

Throughout the whole ordeal, Kaia sat off to the side on one of the weapon tables, flicking her snake trunks back and forth like she’d swing human legs if she had them.

“Bored, Kaia?” I asked her after Chaos recommended we all take a break.

“Oh no, not at all. Thiss iss _great_.” She grinned, her forked tongue flicking between her fangs.

Grumbling to myself, I slid the quiver of arrows I’d been practicing with off my shoulder.

“It’s just your first day, Ariadne,” Chaos told me encouragingly. “You don’t have to be good at anything yet.”

“Yeah,” Kaia sighed. “At leasst we know what your weapon of choice _won’t_ be.”

“The silver lining, of course,” I chimed. “Just show me one more time, Chaos.”

“Sure,” he remarked, taking an arrow from his own sheath of projectiles and fitting it onto the bow.

He pulled the string back and let the arrow fly all in one swift movement, making my jerky motions seem even more clumsy. When Chaos’s bolt hit the target square in the center, I could only stare at all my missed shots lying on the ground next to the target.

“Alright,” I sighed, throwing my hands up comically. “I give up!”

Kaia burst out in her weird hissing laugh, but Chaos just nodded, walking up to the wall of bullseyes to pluck his arrows off the target and mine off the ground.

“Okay,” he started. “Well, we’re basically all through with the basics, so we can move on to something else, if you wa—”

“Yes, _please_ ,” I insisted.

“Ooo, how about macess next?” Kaia requested.

Chaos turned to me. “You good with that?”

“Anything but more archery would be great, actually.”

“Come on, then,” he responded, waving his hand for us to follow.

We headed towards the other end of the Arena. On our way, we passed by Elise, who was dueling with another camper, a girl at least twice her size. Elise’s bruised and scarred face stretched into a grin and gave me a thumbs-up when she saw us, her opponent about to smack her in the side with a spear. I flinched as Elise caught the spear in her hand at the last second and yanked it away from the other girl, slamming the other end of it into her rival’s shoulder.

“Ouch,” I hissed between my teeth.

Elise’s goggles glinted and Chaos called to her, “Move your feet more, Elise! If Ingrid wanted a fixed target, she’d be fighting dummy, instead.”

Ingrid rubbed the spot on her shoulder where Elise hit her, but smirked at Chaos’s teasing.

Elise grinned, taunting, “Shut your mouth, brother, before I shut it for you.”

Chaos returned a smug look. “Just because you’ve been teaching me to fight before I knew my ABCs doesn’t mean I can’t give you some pointers every once in a while.”

As Ingrid finished recovering and made a move to attack Elise again, Elise dodged her quick as lightning. She called towards Chaos, “You _still_ don’t know your ABCs, _fatuus_.”

Before Chaos could reply, Kaia suddenly stopped hiss-laughing her fangs off. A woman approached on a coasting snake tail.

“Good morning, Lamia,” Kaia greeted, nodding her head respectively.

“Morning, Kaia,” replied the tall, slender snake-woman. She slithered up to our group. “Chaos, Ariadne.” Lamia nodded to us accordingly.

I had caught an okay glimpse of Lamia in the Mess Hall, but I had been a little distracted by being up on stage in front of the entire camp. Her single snake tail made her look like a mermaid, except fit for land. The shiny dark green scales of her tail glinted from the light of the arena, and her bottle-green eyes followed suit. I had guessed before that she appeared maybe in her thirties, but now I noticed strands of gray mixed in with her coal-black hair. I suppose it’s hard to settle on a human age when you’re immortal.

“Are we taking a little break from the dueling?” Lamia asked, smiling.

“Just the usual snake-head shenanigans, Lamia,” Elise chimed, waving her hand.

Her and Ingrid had stopped their brawl when Lamia came up, and I remembered how effortlessly Lamia had been able to quiet down the rowdy dual-bloods last night during dinner.

“And, Ariadne, how’ss your firsst full day been so far?” She smiled kindly at me and Chaos. “How’ss training going?”

“It’s... going,” Chaos sighed.

Kaia stifled a giggle and I glared at Chaos before his face split into a sideways grin.

I turned to explain to Lamia, “Long-ranged combat: not my forte.”

Nodding, Lamia volunteered thoughtfully, “Try knivess.”

“Will do, Lamia,” Chaos agreed. “See you around.”

As Lamia gave us each a respectful nod and turned to leave, Ingrid slammed Elise over the head with her spear.

Kaia hissed through her teeth and Chaos muttered some curse in Latin under his breath at Elise clamping her hands against her head.

“ _Damnare_. Anyway, come on, Ariadne. Knives are this way,” he told me.

I questioned, “I thought we were gonna do maces next, like Kaia said.”

“Yeah,” Kaia assured. “But when Lamia givess you advice to try ssomething...”

“...You try it,” Chaos finished.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who is out of school for summer vacation and now has infinitely more time to write! Enjoy your early and extra long chapter.  
> Also, a thank you goes out to the guest on FF.net who reviewed, pointing out that Google Translate is, indeed, shit. Originally, I wasn't really going for accuracy with the Latin thing, but now that you've pointed it out, I feel as if it's a necessary thing to get right, especially if it's going to be such a huge part of the series. Thanks!

Lamia had guessed correctly when she’d advised me to try my hand at knives. When I told this to Chaos, he just replied with, “Lamia doesn’t _guess_.”

In any case, the change from calm, calculated, boring long-ranged combat to quick, raw swordplay was just what I needed. Kaia seemed to be enjoying watching Chaos and I duel.

Even though I’d never held much more than a pocket knife in my whole life, and I had only started learning to fight with a dagger today, Chaos told me that it was like I was born to hold one.

He also mentioned regrettably that close-combat wasn’t his strong suit, and that he might not be the best teacher for me, even though he beat me every time we dueled so far. But he also said that I was making good progress, and that was already way better than what I’d been accomplishing in archery.

It only took a couple minutes for me to get the hang of the flow of close-combat. My hand curled around the handle of the blade comfortably, not clumsily like how I’d held the crossbows and guns earlier. By our fourth of fifth round of dueling, Chaos was past teaching me stances and footwork; I’d picked up on it almost effortlessly. We were flat out fighting, now.

Chaos’s goggles flashed as he jabbed at me with a wooden practice knife; it had the same weight and feel of a real dagger, without the blood-shedding part. I stepped back quickly and then lunged at him, my own mock-blade in my fist, pointing down. He caught my wrist on his forearm before my knife hit him in the chest and pushed me back with one shoulder, sending me stumbling backwards. As he did so, he managed to tag me with his knife, and if it had been real, it would’ve left a small cut on my shoulder.

I soon righted myself and flipped the blade over in my hand. Going in for another hit, I stepped forward, and Chaos braced himself, but this time, I faked it. Instead of going for his torso, I ducked under his arm and before he even had time to figure out what was happening, I swiveled around on my heels and pressed the wooden knife into his back. As Chaos started to turn to look at me, I stuck my foot out to kick his legs out from under him. You know, for good measure.

He landed on the dusty Arena floor and his weapon went skittering away from him. Chaos looked up at me standing over him and laughed.

Kaia was clapping enthusiastically off to the side.

“Gods, Ariadne,” Chaos told me. “You sure you haven’t done this before?”

I offered him a hand up and he brushed himself off. “Thanks, and, yeah, I swear I didn’t even know I was this good with knives.”

“You’ve got a really acrobatic style of fighting. Have you taken martial arts or gymnastics in the past?”

I shook my head.

“Hmm...” He thought about this. “I guess you're not great with the long range stuff, but knives on the other hand... I'd say you should stick with daggers for now. Not a lot of people can pull off short-bladed weapons, but you're small enough. It takes a lot skill and courage to be able to get up in your opponent's face to fight."

I didn’t say anything; I was taken aback by his comment.

“He jusst called you sshort, Ari!” Kaia called.

"It was meant to be a compliment,” Chaos assured me.

I just laughed. “Then let’s go again, snake-head.”

This time, I was able to beat him in even less time. It only took a few maneuvers to get inside Chaos’s bubble of defense and tap my knife against the area over his heart.

Kaia was cheering from the sidelines again, and I noticed that a couple other kids had come to watch, too. Among them was the huge, dark-skinned, curly-haired son of the Minotaur, Theo, who I’d met yesterday. He hung back, behind the small crowd, but watched intently as Chaos and I dueled. Theo turned away shyly when he saw that I was looking him.

“Okay, so, we get her on our paintball team, right?” a different, more unwelcome voice asked.

“ _Non ei, iterum_ ,” Chaos mumbled.

“You can say that again,” I told him.

Ruin Abaddon leaned casually on a six-foot tall, three-pronged, golden trident. He twirled it in between his hands, making the spikes on top swivel back and forth.

“Will you go away?” Chaos sighed, talking to Ruin like he was an annoying little cousin, which I suppose in a way he was. “I’m trying to teach over here.”

Ruin huffed like he was just as aggravated as Chaos.

“He really just follows you around like a shadow, doesn't he?” I asked Chaos.

“Ever since we were eight,” Chaos confirmed.

“I really hate it when you act like I’m not here,” Ruin complained.

“Well,” Chaos said thoughtfully, “the alternative would be acknowledging you exist, and that would just end up giving me an even bigger headache than I already have.”

“Gods, Chaos,” Ruin growled.

Chaos looked around. “Did someone just say my name?”

“Seriously, is this a daily occurrence?” I questioned him.

Chaos nodded as if to say, _unfortunately_. Flipping his blade around in his hand, he got back into a fighting stance.

I mirrored his posture, ready for another round. “And you haven’t killed each other yet? You two deserve medals.”

Chaos laughed in response, while off to the side, Kaia giggled at Ruin’s face growing redder.

When I jabbed my knife at Chaos, he stepped back and then ducked to lunge at me, going for my stomach. I successfully dodged the blow, and Kaia cheered me on.

Ruin ignored the fact that we were ignoring _him_ , and spoke up, “Anyway, I _hope_ you’re on our team for paintball, Princess. I mean, I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to be. The only other option is the Bull’s team, and they’re a bunch of clumsy brutes.”

I looked out of the corner of my eye at the crowd oohing at Ruin’s remark. Theo was nowhere to be seen, and I assumed he got out there the second he saw Ruin show up.

Chaos landed a hit on my shoulder and I stumbled backwards. He paid no mind to the fact he just beat me, and turned coldly to Ruin. “How about you just get out of here and stop bothering me and my friends.”

Ruin seemed grateful for the attention to be turned back on him. He was like a little kid who just annoyed his parents until they gave him what he wanted. He smiled, almost in mock-kindness, and said, “Nah, I think I’ll stay right here.” His hands twisted around his trident.

Chaos reached up calmly to tighten the straps on his goggles, his jaw clenching. Ruin clutched his trident and opened his mouth, letting loose a sound that seemed to slow time around us.

Chaos paused, confused, and his arms dropped to his sides like pendulums. Ruin’s voice was silky and melodic, and everyone around us instantly quieted down to listen to the incoherent mumbling coming from Ruin’s mouth like it was the most beautiful noise they’d ever heard. The crowd gravitated towards him sluggishly. I was unable to make out exactly what words he was muttering, all I knew was that I needed to hear more.

I was so entranced by Ruin’s soft singing, I took a shaky step towards him before I could stop myself. Everyone was doing the same, and their eyes drooped like they were getting sleepy. Even Chaos’s knees looked like they were about to buckle. I realized that I really wanted to take a nap; fall asleep to Ruin’s siren song.

 _Siren,_ I thought lazily. _He’s a son of a siren._ I thought back to my huge mythology book at home. In the myths, the sirens lured sailors to their island by brain-washing them with their singing. Then, I recalled, the sirens would eat the enchanted sailors.

That particular fact was enough to pull me out of the trance. Though it felt like moving through honey, I managed to slowly raise my arm with the wooden practice knife in it, and flick it towards Ruin.

_Thunk!_

Wow. It worked better than I’d planned. Maybe Chaos’s long-ranged combat lessons did teach me something, because I’d managed to beam Ruin right in the center of his perfectly-tanned forehead.

He yelped when the practice knife clattered at his feet, everyone snapping out of their trance.

Chaos straightened up, looking confusedly from me to Ruin, who was angrily rubbing the spot on his forehead where I’d hit him. Chaos threw back his head and laughed louder than I’d ever heard him. Ruin looked ready to pulverize him, and when Chaos saw this, he made a break for the Arena entrance. Following him, I realized I was giggling, too. So was nearly everyone else watching.

Clutching his stomach from laughter, Chaos stumbled out the doors with me trailing behind, leaving Ruin hanging on his golden trident, watching us leave with a furious look on his face. On the way out, I caught a glimpse of Theo, holding a spiked mace in his hand, not really doing much damage to the dummy in front of him. He gave me a shy smile as we passed.

When we were safely out of the Arena, Chaos looked at me in awe, a grin a mile wide stretching across his face. “You just hit Ruin Abaddon in the head with a wooden stick.”

“Gods, can _all_ the children of sirens do that?” I questioned him.

“Not all of them. Ruin is more... gifted than most.”

I scoffed. “Gifted.”

“Well, it kept me from breaking his nose, didn’t it?”

Glancing around and squinting into the bright sunlight, I saw the distant shadow of the Sick Bay looming up on the cliff. I vaguely wondered why the building had to be so huge. It was three stories tall, containing nothing but rooms upon rooms, as far as I could remember from my brief, hazy trip through it on my first day.

I turned back to Chaos. “Yeah, what’s with that, by the way?” I inquired, referring to him and Ruin, my curiosity overcoming my cautiousness. “You two seem to snap pretty easily when you’re around each other.”

He shrugged in reply, and I was glad I hadn’t made him mad by asking. “It’s in our monster blood, remember? We all get little bursts of anger sometimes.”

In the back of my mind, I was thinking that that couldn’t be all it was, but I let it go. We were walking down the dirt path towards the other side of Camp, and I wondered if Kaia had expected us to wait for her outside the Arena. Whoops. She was probably okay though, sitting back and watching Ruin get more and more red in his stupid too-perfect face.

I asked, “Does Ruin do that singing thing often?”

“Nah,” Chaos answered, shaking his head. “I think it takes a lot of energy for him to do it, actually.”

“Interesting.”

“In any case, it’s a better power than mine, if you ask me.”

“Hey, I’d take turning people to stone over no powers any day.”

“Just be patient,” Chaos told me genially. “Now that you know you’re a dual-blood, I’m sure your imposing and awe-inspiring super powers will develop any day now.”

We turned up a path, weaving between campers standing on the trail. One girl with chalk-white skin and bright red hair was holding a crossbow in one hand, while her other arm was wrapped up in a sling. Now that I’d gotten used to the regular monster-like attributes between the campers, I’d started to notice other similarities among them... like how they all seemed to have injuries, ranging anywhere from a cloth bandage wrapped around their head, to a leg cast reaching up past their knee. I no longer questioned why the Camp needed such a huge Sick Bay.

I suppose I could see why Chaos envied Ruin’s ability to use his singing to stop fights from starting, seeing as Chaos was the one who had to patch up the hurt campers afterwards.

Curiously, I asked Chaos, “When did you first figure out you could turn things to stone?”

Chaos hissed through his teeth.

“What?”

“It’s a very long story, involving an overly excited five-year-old me, a moldy can of tuna, and my neighbor’s very elderly, very unfortunate cat.”

“Poor cat,” I said, guessing at what had happened to the beloved pet.

“Rest in peace, Mr. Dibbs.”

“But, five years old?” I awed. “That’s how old you were when you found out you were a dual-blood? Talk about head starts.”

Chaos stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. “Actually, my dad always knew I was a dual-blood. He knew my mom was Medusa.”

“Um, no specific details needed, but how did that work out?”

Chaos laughed. “My dad’s blind. Most of the snake-head’s dads are, actually.”

“Your dad’s blind, and he’d been taking care of a hyperactive dual-blood son for the first five years of his life? I hope you got him a Number One Dad mug for Father’s Day.”

Chuckling, Chaos said, “Yeah, I call him when I can, for our birthdays and holidays and stuff, but I don’t see him a whole lot anymore. I think we’d both rather me be here, with all my siblings and where I can train and stuff.”

I nodded, but I could only think again about my own dad. I’d have to get him like a billion Father’s Day cards to make up for me being gone so long.

As we made our way slowly up the hill, I realized Chaos was steering us towards the big round building with smoke billowing from the top. It wasn’t nearly as big as the Arena, but it was about the size of my one-story house back in Porter. There was different colored smoke flowing from the top of the structure, too; one pillar of exhaust was deep red, and another was spewing pure white gas. It was the camp forge that Kaia had walked me past yesterday on our little tour.

Chaos continued with his story. “I guess I don’t really remember enough to recall exactly how my dad told me I was a dual-blood, I kind of just knew my whole life. I was never undetermined like you.”

“Undetermined?” I asked, remembering the different occasions I’d heard that word around Camp. “What exactly does that mean?”

“It’s just a word to call someone when they don’t know who their monster parent is.”

“Ah,” I sighed. “And... how exactly would I go about getting... _determined_?”

“There’s a kind of claiming ceremony we have on special nights” he explained. “You’ll probably get to see one eventually if you stick around long enough.”

We came up to the huge doors of the big round building. They were propped open with crates, letting hot air flow out of the entrance. The walls of the edifice were sleek, black bricks.

“What are we doing at the Forge?” I inquired.

“Getting you some gear, of course,” Chaos chimed, stepping into the building.

I followed him eagerly. All day, I’d seen campers walking around hefting spears and hauling around battle axes. It was about time I got my own weapon.

Inside the Forge, the walls were black and metallic-looking. There were dim fluorescent lights hanging precariously from the ceiling, but most of the light in the building seemed to be coming from fires lining the walls. Half of the place seemed to be a kind of old-fashioned blacksmith’s forge with anvils and pliers and hammers, while the other half was filled with what appeared like high-tech welding and shaping machines. The walls were laced with tools, and boxes of nails and bolts were scattered around carelessly on stainless steel workbenches. The lack of safety goggles and gloves seemed like it _might_ just be a hazard to someone’s safety, but none of the people zipping between hammering spears into points and sharpening sides of swords seemed to care.

“Finley!” Chaos hollered above the noise of clanging and sputtering from various campers working on projects. “You in here?”

“What’s that shoutin’?” asked a boy, emerging from behind an anvil, a red-hot sword lying on it, ready to be shaped and sharpened.

The guy had on a welding mask, so I couldn’t see his face. He hit the glowing sword he was working on once more with a hammer, sending multi-colored sparks flying everywhere, before grabbing a blowtorch and running the blue flame up and down the length of the blade.

“Stop working for a second in your life, will you?” Chaos told him jokingly, approaching his workspace.

“You’re one to talk, Avers,” the boy answered playfully, raising his head to Chaos and lifting up his mask to reveal his face.

He looked about sixteen years old and was a little pudgy, with pale skin riddled with small cuts and burns, probably from working in the Forge. A tuft of light brown hair stuck out from under the mask on top of his head, and he had about a billion freckles to match.

“Fresh from the Arena, I see,” the boy continued, tapping his temple, referring to Chaos’s goggles still over his eyes.

“Aren’t I always?” Chaos chimed, clapping the boy on the back. Chaos gestured for me to come over and said, “Ariadne, this is my friend Finley. Resident blacksmith.”

“Hey, scythian dracaena bite girl, right? Congratulations on surviving,” he chirped. Finley spoke with a heavy accent; Irish, I would guess.

He pulled off a thick glove and held out his beefy, calloused hand to shake. Putting aside his multitude of freckles, his most extraordinary feature was his eyes. One of them was brown, and the other light blue. I’d never seen that on a human before, but then again I suppose he wasn’t exactly one-hundred-percent human.

I shook his hand—which was huge compared to mine—and said, “Yeah, thanks. I’ve heard I’m lucky to be alive.”

Suddenly, Chaos grabbed my wrist.

I looked at him. “What?”

“Stop scratching,” he remarked sharply, pointing at my arm.

I hadn’t even realized it, but I’d been about to go in for another scrape at the bandage around my arm. I glared at Chaos, because now it really itched.

Finley laughed heartily. “Oh man, you shoulda seen him when I got that bad burn on my hand after a welding accident. He wouldn’t stop following me around, slapping my wrist whenever I poked at it.”

I shook out my hands. “ADHD thing.”

“Believe me, I know.” Finley nodded. “That’s why you gotta keep your hands busy,” he explained, holding out his own rough hands in front of him. “Speaking of which, what’re you two here for? Don’t tell me you already used up those rounds I made for you, Avers.”

“Nope,” Chaos responded. “Getting something for Ariadne. A weapon to use while she’s here at Camp.”

“Cool,” Finley replied, turning to me. “Got a preference? We’ve got everything from bows and arrows to javelins to—”

“A dagger,” I decided right away. “I think I’ll leave the long-ranged stuff to Chaos.”

“Good choice,” Finley smirked. He gestured for us to follow him, and as he made his way down the length of the building, he pulled off his gloves and mask all the way, setting them down on a random workbench.

“So, I gotta ask,” I told him, stepping gingerly around people hammering metal into weapons, sending sparks of so many different colors flying everywhere, it had to be magic of some kind. “What’s with the eyes?”

“Oh, you mean the brown and the blue?” Finley figured, like he got the question a lot.

“Yeah, like, is one fake?”

“No. Just some of my dad’s genes playing into my appearance. I’m a son of a manticore.”

“Oh, cool,” I marveled. “What super powers do you get out of that deal?”

Finley laughed. “I’m good with projectiles.” He reached into the front pocket of his blacksmithing apron and pulled out his hand, small throwing knives fit between his knuckles making him look like a chubby, Irish Wolverine. “I also happen to know my way around daggers, so check these out.”

He stepped up to a workbench covered in weapons. Why the dual-bloods needed tables upon tables of weapons both at the Arena _and_ the Forge, I didn’t know; but I wasn’t complaining. Finley swept an arm over the blades of every size and shape piled on the bench. “Take your pick, Venom Girl.”

I hovered over the table, and I was vaguely aware of Chaos and Finley behind me snickering at me gaping over the weapons. Some of the blades were longer than others; more like short swords than daggers. Some had curved blades, others were straight. Most had hilts, though some were merely blades with grips on one end like tiny miniature spears, and no fancy hilts at all. Though, there was one thing that was similar among every single knife of the table: they were all fashioned out of the same black metal.

“What are these _made_ of?” I inquired, picking up a very long, thin dagger with a tip as sharp as a needle. The dark blade seemed to suck light out of the air.

“It’s called Typhonian Lead,” Chaos explained.

Finley added, “Not to be confused with Stygian Iron, of course.”

“It’s magic. It’ll kill pretty much anything, if you don’t count lycanthropes, which can only be killed with silver, but unlike Celestial Bronze or Imperial Gold, which the half-bloods use, Typhonian Lead can hurt mortals just as much as monsters.”

“And demigods,” Finley included, offering a small grin.

Chaos didn’t look entirely happy about that last comment, though he continued, “It’s great for making bullets, too. And, um, Ariadne, you’re not going to want that one.”

He was referring to the dagger I was holding; the longer, needle-tipped one.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because of your fighting style,” he clarified. “Remember how I mentioned your acrobatic approach to fighting? You’re going to want a knife that’s shorter, easier to tuck in and move with.”

Chaos stepped forward and dug around in the pile of blades until he found one he deemed satisfactory.

“Try this instead,” he insisted, pulling a smaller knife complete with a leather sheath off the table.

As he did so, a leather cord that was tied around the scabbard was pulled taught, and he yanked the end of it for it to come free. Another matching sheath was freed from the mound of knives, and I realized that the two were tied together.

“Oh,” Chaos remarked. “I didn’t realize it was a set.”

He was about to put the two knives down on the table again, when I stopped him. “Wait a second,” I ordered. I took the knives from him, unsheathing one from its leather binding. The thin blade was just the same as all the others; dark and intimidating, and came to a deadly sharp point at the end. The entire dagger itself was short—only about eight or nine inches long. I checked out its twin, and sure enough, it was made of the same material and looked exactly identical to the first. Apart from the slight curve in the blades, they didn’t appear particularly flashy or special.

“These are _perfect_ ,” I told Chaos, looping the cord through my belt so each dagger sat at my hip, ready to be drawn in a fight. They fit snugly. I put my hands on my waist and smiled up at Chaos, who was standing back and watching me intently.

“I don’t know,” Chaos said in mock indecision, scratching his chin like he was thinking hard. “What’s your professional opinion, Fin?”

Finley answered, “Looks like they were made for her, Avers.”

...

That night, I had dinner with the snake-heads. Kaia came to join us, too. Chaos, Elise, and a bunch of other shade-wearing kids all sat together at the table under Medusa's window. Her stained glass scene above her children’s table depicted Medusa herself walking through a garden filled with stone statues. They were probably people she'd turned to stone herself.

Looking around at all the other windows, I wondered why Medusa had this lovely scene for her children to eat under, while the Minotaur was only recognized for his death, by Theseus's hand. From here, I could see Theo eating quietly at the end of the Minotaur kids’ table, while his huge siblings laughed and flicked food at each other.

I beamed, “So, I’ve met the children of the Minotaur, the children of Medusa, a very annoying son of a siren, and a son of a manticore.” I counted off the monsters on my fingers. “Who else do I have to watch out for around here?”

Chaos, who sat across the table from me, responded, “Well, over there we’ve got the Empousai sisters.” He nodded to the table behind me.

I turned to look, and was met with a chattering bunch of girls. Most of them had orange hair the color of flames, and all of them were drop-dead gorgeous... if you ignored their glowing red eyes.

“Don’t they... have any boy campers?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Kaia made a hissing laugh and said, “Not really.”

I didn’t ask for an explanation.

“They’re good with magic,” Chaos explained. “Their grandmother is Hecate.”

Kaia leaned in and whispered to me, “Other than that, they aren’t good for much elsse, they don’t fight well with real weapons; they’re alwayss off-balance.”

Elise cracked up.

“What about them?” I asked, gesturing to the small group of kids on the other side of the room next to the Minotaur table.

“Children of harpies,” Chaos replied. “They mostly have daughters, too.”

I stretched to get a closer look at the quiet harpy children, bent over the table, picking at their food. There weren’t many similar features among them, though most had colorful feathers mixed in with their long ratty hair, and I couldn’t tell whether they were fake or not.

“Those kids over there are the scythian dracaena offspring,” Elise told me.

“Ah,” Kaia sighed lovingly. “My beloved niecess and nephewss.”

Their table was filled to the brim with green-eyed kids of every age. Some seemed to have patches of reptilian scales on their skin.

“And them?” I questioned, pointing to two campers—a boy and a girl—sitting at a table alone. Then I noticed Laelaps the dog sitting on a chair across from them, eating their table scraps.

“The Kampe twinss,” Kaia said. “They can talk to animalss. Cool, huh?”

“Definitely,” I agreed.

“Okay, but you’ve gotta watch out for the children of the kobaloi,” Elise warned, nodding to another table. “Their parents are trickster imps that used to rob and mess with mortals in the old myths. Don’t ever lend them anything you’re not prepared to lose forever.”

I looked at the small, spindly children. They all had elvish ears and basically looked like a bunch of teenage goblins. Their movements were quick and sporadic, and I could tell each and every one of them were either extremely ADHD, or had one too many two-liter bottles of Red Dye #40 soft drink that day.

“I’ll keep a hand on my wallet when they’re around,” I promised.

Up on the stage at the front of the building, Lamia cleared her throat. Almost instantly, everyone in the room quieted down, even the twitchy kobaloi kids stopped poking each other and swiping their neighbor’s food off their plates.

“Good evening,” Lamia greeted, smiling down at us. “Ssome quick announcements and I’ll let you get back to your food.”

Chaos and Elise reverently watched as Lamia shuffled through some papers in her hands. Kaia just kept scarfing down pizza.

“Tomorrow at eight, you can meet Keiko and Kenji at the sstabless for man-eating horsseback riding classs.” Lamia nodded to the Kampe twins. “And Elise will be doing junior sspear fighting lesssonss all morning in the Arena for five- to ten-year-olds.”

Elise waved to everyone.

“And,” Lamia concluded, folding up her papers. “Of coursse, tomorrow will be paintball night.”

Before she had even finished her sentence, the entire room erupted in banging on tables and hollering to the other campers. Lamia didn’t bother trying to rein the crowd in again; she just smiled and slithered off the stage, leaving the clearly divided teams to continue taunting each other.

Kaia had stood up on her double snake trunks to yell insults at the children of kobaloi, and even the quiet-looking harpy kids appeared like they were ready to tear some Medusa kids to shreds with those abnormally long fingernails of theirs.

I sighed across the table at Chaos, whom Elise was standing over, hollering at the Kampe kids. Chaos just shook his head and laughed, and I got the feeling that tomorrow was going to be absolutely unforgettable.

 


	7. Chapter 7

I stood in a musty old room with a slanted ceiling. It was littered with junk and random objects like bent swords and ruined armor. As far as I could tell, it was an attic. I walked over to the single dusty window at the end of the room and looked out. I was back at Camp Half-Blood. In the distance, I could see the tall pine tree on the hill. The valley was dotted with campers in orange T-shirts.

Suddenly, I heard someone talking beneath me, and a trap door in the floor swung open.

"Come on, Seaweed-Brain. Don't hit your head like last time."

"I won't!"

It was the two demigods from before, Seaweed Brain and Wise Girl.

"Couldn't you do this by yourself? You know I hate it up here," Seaweed Brain complained as the girl gave him a hand up into the attic.

"It’s for Chiron’s mission. We _both_ have to be here," Wise Girl replied, blowing some floating dust out of her face.

“Right,” the boy groaned.

The blond girl turned to the corner of the room, and I moved to see what she was looking at.

The mummified figure absolutely terrified me. She sat on a three-legged stool and wore a tie-dyed dress. Why in the world would they keep that thing in the _attic_?

Wise Girl didn’t react to it, like she was used to seeing dried-up old mummies in corners of creepy, dark rooms. The girl bowed her head. "Oh, Oracle of Delphi, speaker of prophecies, slayer of the mighty Python, what is our destiny?"

At first, nothing happened. The mummy just sat there staring at us with glassy eyes. I didn’t really know what Wise Girl expected the lifeless thing to do, but then green smoke started spewing from the mummy's mouth and pouring out onto the floor. It reminded me of the colored smoke bombs that I had rigged in a teacher's desk once in sixth grade.

Before either of the demigods could do anything, the green smoke washed over our feet, and the mummy turned its head. Was it just my imagination, or was it looking straight at me?

I woke with a start and a pain in my temples. Rubbing the sides of my head, I sat up. The light filtering in through the windows was gray and the room was chilly from the fans blowing air around the dorm. I had a buzzing sound in my ear that wouldn’t go away.

After I caught my breath, I plopped back down onto my pillow. It only took a few seconds to realize that I wouldn't be getting back to sleep any time soon. That image of the mummy that was supposedly the spirit of a great Oracle was still burned into my eyelids. I sighed and went about getting ready for the day. My bandage had gotten unraveled again during the night, but the skin looked much better than it had two days ago. Maybe Chaos would finally let me take off the stupid thing now.

Slipping on my shoes and tying the cord of my new knives around my belt, I looked out the window. A layer of fog covered the Camp, making the whole place look eerie, like zombies were going to start emerging from the mist any second now to eat all of our brains.

Everyone in the dorm was still asleep, for the most part. It had to be no later than six o’clock in the morning, so I doubted anyone would be up soon. I looked down at my bed. I was about to straighten the sheets because I had nothing better to do, but just then, I spotted something small and brown on my blanket.

"Hello little one," I cooed, putting my hand out in front of the spider.

It didn't move, so I figured it was dead. I was about to pick it up and take it outside, but just then the buzzing sound in my ears got really loud.

"Ouch," I hissed under my breath.

 _You too?_ a voice asked. It seemed to be coming from nowhere.

"What?" I whispered.

_The air pressure today is quite heavy. Us spiders get the most horrid migraines._

"Us spiders?" I glanced back down at the seemingly dead spider under my hand.

_Yes, Miss. Be prepared for some bad headaches today._

"Uh... okay..."

I set the small spider back down on my bed quickly and it popped up and scurried away. I scratched nervously at my arm. _Maybe that scythian dracaena venom really does cause long-term brain damage,_ I thought.

“What are you doing?” asked a small voice.

I turned to see a small girl in pajamas standing behind me. She couldn’t be older than eleven, with dark tan skin, and long, sleek black hair. I recognized her as the girl that Elise had been braiding the hair of yesterday morning, while she had been trying to convince me to go find Chaos.

“Oh, nothing,” I stammered in response to the girl’s question.

The little girl didn’t quite look convinced, but she just continued with, “Elise isn’t awake yet, but I can’t go back to sleep.”

“Yeah, me neither, kid,” I confided.

“Can you braid hair?” she asked me innocently, flashing her big dark eyes.

“Um...” I was about to answer with “no, I’ve never braided anyone’s hair in my life,” but I decided to go ahead and give it a try. The little girl looked kind of bored, waiting for everyone to wake up. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I told her, “Sure I can.”

She gave me a pink plastic hairbrush and plopped down on the floor in front of me. I ran the brush through her hair and said, “I’m Ariadne, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Havoc,” the girl chimed happily. “Child of Euryale, one of the gorgon sisters.”

“ _Havoc?_ ” I inquired, brushing out her shiny black hair. “What is _with_ all these weird names?”

I actually had had that question bouncing around in my head for a while now, ever since Ruin introduced himself to me. On one side, there were dual-bloods with relatively normal names, like Elise and Finley. Though, on the other hand, what kind of names were Chaos, Ruin, and Havoc?

“They’re monster names,” Havoc explained in her little kid voice. “It depends on whether or not your mortal parent knew your monster parent was a monster or not.”

“Oh,” I sighed. I started separating Havoc’s hair into three long strands. “So, your father knew your mom was a gorgon, just like Chaos’s dad?”

Havoc said, “Yup!”

As I started twisting the bunches of hair around each other, I asked, “So, do you think Ariadne would count as a monster name? It’s from Greek mythology...” I _had_ been wondering whether or not my dad knew about the whole monster-mama thing. If he did, he sure had a lot of explaining to do next time I saw him.

“I don’t think so,” Havoc said hesitantly, like she wasn’t sure. “I dunno. Hey, are you doing a French braid?” she asked me.

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “What’s the difference between French braid and a regular one?”

I looked down at my hands, spinning the last of Havoc’s hair into the interwoven pattern and tying it off with the hair band she handed me. I stared at my handiwork while Havoc ran her hand over the back of her head where I’d spun her hair into an overly-intricate twist that broke away from her head at the base of her neck and fell down her back in a nearly perfect braid.

“Hey!” she cheered. “You do it even better than Elise does! I’m having you braid my hair every day now.” Havoc stood up and took the pink hairbrush back from me, sauntering off.

I watched her walk away, the dark hair bouncing in its picturesque braid that I had no idea how I’d managed to weave, considering I had never done anything like that before in my life.

Beginners luck, probably. I’d suck at hair styling next time Havoc showed up, I figured, wanting a French braid or a fishtail or whatever either of those meant.

As Havoc climbed up and settled back down on her bunk bed, the room was lifeless again, save the slowly oscillating fans at the end of the rows of bunks. Taking another look at the thick layer of fog outside, the pain in my temples returned. I needed to take a walk.

I slowly made my way down the marble steps to the lower level of the barracks, and ambled quietly through the rows of sleeping boys. Pushing the double doors open and passing under the Latin and ancient Greek symbols carved in the door frame, I received a blast of chilly air from outside, and immediately wished I’d brought a jacket. I’d never really put up with the cold very well, but as soon as I stepped outside, I knew that this day was going to be great.

The sun wasn't up yet, or if it was, it was blocked by clouds. In fact, _everything_ looked blocked by clouds. Fog was everywhere, and I could barely see three feet in front of me. It was chilly and dreary and mucky, and it looked like it could be the set up to a horror movie. In other words, it was _awesome._

I loved this kind of weather, where mist just covered everything. It made me feel... safe. I know it's kind of a weird word for it, but it was true. On the other hand, it made me feel like I could do anything, it made me want to do something dangerous. I wondered if that was just my thrill issues, or if all monster children had this problem.

I grinned at the sky and started jogging blindly into the fog.

Yeah, a hoard of zombies was definitely going to stumble out from the gloom any second now to slurp up my intestines like spaghetti noodles. _Graphic,_ I told myself thoughtfully.

The depiction reminded me of all those obscure horror movies my dad liked, the ones I had posters for in my room. Thinking about my room made me miss my dad and my house all over again, but I couldn’t deny how much I loved it here at Camp Echidna. Everything about this place was new to me, something I definitely needed after being stuck in a small town like Porter all my life. The dual-bloods, the weapons, even just the ocean being nearby were all foreign concepts to me.

Speaking of the ocean, I decided to head up the hill to the Sick Bay. Maybe I’d finally climb that tree up on the cliff. What had Chaos called it? The gumbo limbo tree. With a light breeze at my back, pushing me up the slope, I climbed the hill to the Sick Bay. Today, the chalkboard on the porch read in bright blue writing, “The doctor said, ‘I've got some bad news; your DNA is backwards.’ The patient replied, ‘And...?’”

Glancing towards the cliff, I noticed a silhouette out near the edge, under the gigantic tree. A person was sitting on the ground out there. Cautiously, I sauntered up to them, and as I neared, the fog cleared up a little. When they heard my feet crunching on the ground, they whipped their head around to look at me.

I held my hands up as if to say, _Sorry for sneaking up, no ninja artistry intended!_

“Hello...” the huge, beefy person said in a quiet voice.

I recognized the guy instantly as Theodore, the son of the Minotaur. “What’s up, Theo?”

He hesitantly turned his head back out towards the empty space in front of us, and told me softly, “Watching the... ocean.” His dark face looked just about as gloomy as the atmosphere.

“Cool,” I said. “Mind if I join you? No one else is awake yet.”

Theo didn’t reply, but he waved to the spot on the ground next to him, so I plopped down on the grass and crossed my legs in front of me.

I stared out at the sea. I had never really been one for admiring scenery, but this was strangely beautiful. The fog hovered above the water, making it so the ugly, jagged rocks at the bottom of the cliff couldn't be seen. It was like a solid wall of gray smoke.

Theo scratched the back of his head nervously, glancing around like he was feeling guilty about being there. He scooted back a bit from the edge of the cliff—not like he’d been that close to it in the first place—like he was afraid I’d push him off or something.

“It’s really nice out,” I chimed, trying unsuccessfully to break the overcast mood. “But you can’t really see the ocean when it’s like this.” I waved around at the mist.

“I can only come up here when there’s so much fog,” Theo admitted, instantly looking down at his lap like he’d said something embarrassing.

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” I asked, curiously.

Theo hesitated. “I’m... afraid of heights,” he confided.

“Hey, that’s alright,” I said, like it was no big deal. I found it hard to believe that these thrill-seeking dual-bloods could be afraid of anything, though.

"Do you... like heights?" he asked timidly.

"Well, I can't say I _don't_ like them. Sometimes they freak me out, but on a day like this..." I smiled and looked up at the heavily clouded sky.

"Yeah... I really love weather... like this. We all do. It's... why I got up early... just for this."

"Why'd you come here then, if you're afraid of heights?" I questioned him.

"I... don't know," he admitted, looking out to sea. "I like the sound of the ocean. And... I'm not really scared of heights, I guess. It's more just... this cliff in particular.”

"Oh?"

Theo took a deep breath, and I got the vague notion that he was telling me something he usually didn’t talk about with other people. The thought made me nervous, like, how did he know I could I be trusted with this exclusive information?

“When I first got here... to Camp... my older siblings took me up here and tried to get me to jump into the water. I was really scared of the rocks at the bottom... so I didn’t. Eventually they just... threw me off, though.”

I stared out in horror at the ocean laid out in front of me, and imagined the rocks lined up at the bottom of the cliff. “Well, obviously you made it across alive,” I pointed out.

“Yeah... it's not really all that hard. They say you’re not a _real_ dual-blood... unless you’ve accomplished the jump. The campers made it into a sport, even... people betting on how far they can get into the water. It's always kind of creeped me out how easily some people can overcome fears like that," Theo explained, and I noticed him stopping and stuttering less and less, but after he glanced up and saw me looking at him, he clammed up again. "But... then again... I was really little. Only about... eight years old."

“Eight years old?" I asked, startled. I thought about Chaos, who’d mentioned he’d been here since he was five. _Has_ everyone _at Camp been here this long?_ I wondered. Sitting back and returning my gaze to the sea, I exclaimed, “I’ve got some catching up to do. Why’d you come so young?”

Theodore took another one of his solemn deep breaths and continued, “My mom... passed away when I was seven. We didn’t have any other family... so I was put in foster care. A scythian dracaena found me at a school... and told me I might be in danger if I didn’t go to Camp.”

“So, you came here.”

Theo nodded, and chose his next words carefully. Looking down at his huge hands, he said in almost a whisper, “I’m really... clumsy. I break things easily. You know the expression... ‘like a bull in a china shop’? That’s me. I was... tired of being moved from house to house... after I messed something up and the family decided they couldn’t handle me anymore. So, yeah... I came here. I go home with my half-siblings sometimes during the school year. I’ll be going to high school next year. But... Camp is kind of my only... real home.”

After he was done speaking, Theo looked partially angry, partially embarrassed, but mostly relieved, like he’d just gotten a vial of very unstable chemicals taken out of his possession. Also, he wore a confused look, like he was wondering why he was sharing all of this with me. He barely knew me, and it seemed like he was just now realizing that when he told me, “Sorry. I’m just... babbling about... sorry.”

I liked the way Theo talked. I couldn’t really believe his claims about being clumsy and breaking things, because he handled his words like fragile glass, and used as little words as possible to make his point. Not like me, going off on tangents at every turn, or making unnecessary comments.

“Nah,” I told him. “It’s cool. I mean, not cool that you had to move around like that or that your mom died, I’m sorry to hear about that part. I mean, cool, like... well, you know what I mean.”

That brought out a small smile from Theo. “Thanks... for listening, I guess. Did you ever get ahold of your dad yesterday?”

I remembered back to dinner two nights ago, when I’d freaked out in front of him over forgetting about my dad. “Oh yeah... uh, no. Chaos told me about that thing you guys do when you can listen in on phone calls. I haven’t given up, though.”

Theo grimaced. “Yeah, be careful about... that. I saw you... in the Arena yesterday, training. Is Chaos a good teacher?”

“Yeah, definitely,” I said. “I learned that I suck at archery and don’t suck quite so much at knives. Got these yesterday, too.” I unsheathed my new daggers from my belt, still loving the sound they made against their coverings. _Shhhink!_ The blades seemed to love the air today just as much as me, because they happily sucked the light and mist out of the space around them like little magic vacuums, sending an aura of darkness back out.

“Finley Brennan made those, didn’t he?” Theo asked.

“Yeah, I think so. How’d you guess?”

“It’s excellent craftsmanship. See how the blade has that dark air around it? Finley is really good with the magic that makes Typhonian Lead so...” He trailed off when he saw me staring.

I noticed that when Theo spoke about Finley’s work on the daggers, his eyes lit up like a musician talking about a symphony. He didn’t stutter or hesitate between words when he told me about him, either, like he was normally prone to.

The grin that had been growing on Theo’s face melted back into his regular shy smile and his ears turned pinkish. “He’s, um... a good blacksmith. He made this for me.” He took a spiked mace from his belt, and held it up for me to see.

The weapon was made of the same material as my knives, and radiated darkness the same way, too.

“I’m not... really good at using it though,” Theo conceded. “I prefer... well... nevermind.”

“No, what?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“I... use magic,” Theo confided, like this was a huge secret that must be kept at all costs. After seeing the confused look on my face, he continued, “It’s not... something that Minotaur kids usually are good at. We’re supposed to be all about... brute force.” He gestured to his mace. “Blunt weapons, and all that.”

“But, _magic_? Theo, that’s awesome!”

He smiled kindly at me. “Thanks, Ariadne. Though... it’s weird being so... different from my siblings.”

I nodded sympathetically. It's true that I noticed Theo's half brothers and sisters weren't anything like him. I'd seen that the first night I'd been at Camp; Theo seemed much more intellectual, right from the start.

"I'm the... runt of the family," he continued, forcing a smile. "I'm the youngest Minotaur kid right now... the most recent. Some hero killed the Minotaur... a few years back... a guy named Percy Jackson."

"A demigod?"

"Yeah. He's killed a lot of monsters... and he's pretty famous for it. I've always wanted to meet him... ask him how he killed my dad."

"But the Minotaur will come back, right? Like, he'll go to Tartarus and respawn?"

“Yeah..." Theo shrugged. "No telling... how long it'll take, though."

"You're lucky," I said. "I don't even know who my mom is."

"Well," Theo said, "I'd try praying extra hard tonight... you might get through to your mom."

"Praying? To a monster?"

Theo gave a small shrug. "Just... a thought," he suggested. "But... the Mist might help. Make your mom proud tonight... maybe she'll notice you. By the way..." he added, standing up.

I nodded, smiling up at him towering over me. "What?"

"We're going to kick your butt at paintball."

...

I got the feeling that paintball around Camp Echidna was more than just a sport to the dual-bloods.

All day, kids of all monster parentages were flooding to the Arena to get in some last-minute training. Kaia and I spent the morning with Chaos doing some martial arts-type stuff, but he told us he had to go brush up on his riflery skills at around lunchtime, so I took the rest of the afternoon to learn how to use my new knives with Kaia. She had this weird idea that I should _name_ the two knives, so when I became a famous demigod-slayer or something, people would remember my weapons.

I laughed at her. " _What?_ "

“C’mon, Ari!” Kaia urged. “Think of all those sstupid, famouss demigod weaponss out there with legendary namess: Anaklusmos, Ivlivs... heck, even most people know Helen of Troy’s Katoptris, desspite it never actually _doing_ anything in all of hisstory. It’ss about time a Typhonian Lead blade got ssome glory. Think about your knivess being in a musseum ssomeday!” She stepped back and waved her hand out in front of her, as if gesturing to the imaginary Dual-Blood Museum of Infamous Lead Weapons.

"Honestly Kaia, even if I did ever get famous or something like the heroes in the myths, why would I want my knives to be put in some dusty display case?"

"Oh, you're right!" Kaia remarked. "Why didn't I think of that before? Put them over a fireplace insstead! Real traditional."

I just smiled and shook my head, but the pain in my temples that had been plaguing me all morning spiked and I lifted my hand to rub the side of my head. The black metal blades in my hands shimmered in the light of the Arena. “What is with them being _lead_ , though?” I asked her. “Isn’t lead kind of... flimsy?”

“Zeuss,” Kaia exclaimed. “It’ss not _really_ lead, Ari. Jusst like how Celesstial Bronze issn’t _really_ bronze. They jusst call it that becausse it _lookss_ like bronze. And do you have any idea how much a gold ssword would even weigh? Thosse Romanss would definitely have their work cut out for them if Imperial Gold was as ssoft and heavy as mortal gold.”

“So... not real lead?” I figured, holding out my blades.

“Nope,” Kaia remarked. “They’re all jusst magical metalss that got named after already-existing materialss from the mortal world.”

“Alright, so who decided that Typhonian Lead looked like the original, flimsy, mortal lead?”

“I don’t know,” Kaia admitted. “Probably ssome dumb demigod.”

We fought again, Kaia armed with just her sharp scythian dracaena claws and teeth; though she promised not to bite me again, which brought me just enough comfort for me to be able to duel her. It turned out that the whole double knives thing was working really well for me. My dad had always told me I was bordering on being ambidextrous, and it really seemed to pay off with the whole combat thing. Another thing that I noticed was that Chaos was totally right about my acrobatic fighting style. Now that he’d pointed it out, I realized just how much time I spent _off_ my feet while fighting, either rolling or leaping or spinning. At one point, I’d done a flat-out somersault over Kaia’s back, and when I’d landed cleanly on my feet behind her, I no longer wondered why Chaos had asked if I’d taken gymnastics before.

I twirled around and held the flat of the blade of my right hand dagger against Kaia’s neck, while my left one curled around her waist and poked her in the ribs.

“Ariadne,” Kaia declared. “You are freaking _amazing_ with those knivess.”

As I muttered out a thanks and let go of her, still awing at how I’d managed to put Kaia in a hold like that, something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. It was Ruin.

The handsome son of a siren was standing over a rack of long tridents, holding a net in his hands, surrounded by a giggling flock of companions. The second he saw me watching, he glared at me. The rest of his friends copied him with equally terrifying glances. I didn’t know whether to be relieved he was going to be on my team for paintball, so I wouldn’t have to be up against him, or annoyed because I’d have to be working with him. At least Chaos and the other Medusa kids would be there, too.

Kaia pulled me away, towards Chaos at the archery range before I could go over there and give Ruin a piece of my mind, and it was probably for the best considering I had two deadly-sharp knives in my hands, but I still wanted to tear something up. I guess I'd have to settle for a straw dummy.

“Hey,” Chaos greeted us when we came up to him. He was sitting on a table by the archery equipment, gingerly polishing a pistol in his lap. He wore goggles over his eyes and his black hoodie was folded up neatly beside him; he looked so weird without the dark jacket, just a green Camp Echidna T-shirt and jeans on. “How’s the knife training going?”

“Awesomely!” Kaia cheered before I could answer. “Ari iss a total natural.”

Chaos looked up and smiled at me. “That’s great,” he said.

“How about you?” I asked. “Still the master in long ranged combat?”

“I suppose so,” he replied, giving me a grin. “I was just debating whether or not to head over to the Camp library.”

I stared at him. “You go to the library _willingly_?”

He peered right back at me. “You don’t?”

“I hate books,” I stated plainly.

“I’m with you on thiss one, Ari,” Kaia announced.

“Well,” Chaos remarked cheerfully. “I’ve been stuck at this camp since I was kindergarten-age, and have barely left since. If I don’t get a regular school, I might as well tutor myself, you know?” He pushed himself off the table and tucked the gun he’d been cleaning into a holster on his belt. Gathering his hoodie in his arms, he reached into a pocket and pulled out his glasses, turning away from us to pull off his goggles and put the shades back on.

“ _Barely left since?_ ” I repeated, astonished, trailing after him as he made his way towards the Arena entrance.

“Ariadne,” he responded. “I know Latin better than English. What did you expect?”

“I’ve been out in the mortal world, Chaoss,” Kaia chimed in from behind me. “Conssider yoursself lucky not to have to deal with those sstupid teacherss.”

Chaos’s smile melted just a little, though it was hard to tell behind those sunglasses.

“I still can’t believe you’ve nearly never left this place,” I repeated.

"Lots of kids here are like that. Most aren't so young like I was, but they stay here year-round."

I nodded. Then, a thought occurred to me. "Will _I_ ever have to leave?"

Chaos thought for a moment. "Depends,” he decided.

"On what?"

"Well, if you actually have somewhere to go if you left, you could. We don't _make_ you stay. Usually we suggest that you complete basic training, but you were only really here to get better from the dracaena poison. Demigods weren't bothering you and satyrs weren't picking up your scent, so it's not that dangerous for you in the real world."

"So, I could call up my dad right now, and have him pick me up from here, and I could forget about all of this and pretend it never happened?"

Chaos crossed the under the doorway out of the Arena, and I hurried to keep up with him. Kaia trailed behind, shaking her head like she was wondering how I could even consider leaving this place.

"Would you want that?" Chaos finally asked.

I hesitated before answering. It was true that I liked it a lot here at Camp so far—except for the occasional interruption from Ruin—but the whole "monsters are real" thing was way bigger than I'd thought. It was like I had to keep reminding myself that this was actually happening, and that these weren't just actors in some huge prank.

Plus, I missed my dad. I had only been away for a few days now, but I was already getting extreme homesickness. Did me staying here mean I'd never get to see him again? I considered Chaos’s situation; he only ever talked to his dad on birthdays and holidays. I’d go crazy if I had to do that.

Camp Echidna was outlandish, I'd admit; but it was freaking awesome, too. Knives and paintball and talking spiders were all super cool, right? But, on the other hand, did I really want to live in a place where kids jumped off cliffs for fun? Looking back on it _now_ , I realized that I actually did, because it was around then that something occurred to me: it was easy to forget, not knowing my monster parent and all, but these kids were like my _family_. They were all half monster just like me, and they could teach me things about this whole new world I had been thrown into. About the gods, demigods, monsters, and dual-bloods. It was all stuff that I still wanted to learn about. Did I really want to leave all that behind?

"Not in a million years," I announced.

Chaos and Kaia both beamed at me, both of them obviously relieved at my answer.


	8. Chapter 8

"Teamss! Ssound off!" Lamia stood precariously on a makeshift stage of upturned wooden crates. "Bullss!"

The left side of the field erupted in shouts and taunts while the campers on the right started booing.

"Ssnakess!" Lamia yelled.

The people all around me burst into cheers and chants, dissing the other team while they booed right back.

"Captainss," Lamia hollered. "Front and center!"

Elise, Chaos’s older sister, pushed through the crowd, claiming her spot at the front of the pack. She was clad in an already paint-splattered jacket that she probably wore to every paintball game, reflective goggles, and had her hair up in a ponytail, showing off the scar that ran down the length of her cheek. On the Bull's side, Linus—one of Theo's brothers I’d met when I’d eaten dinner with them two nights ago—stepped forward. The two captains shook hands, but not before each one of them spat in their own palms ungratefully.

The teams were split up by lodge, but the Medusa kids and Minotaur kids got to take the leads because they had the most children of each group. As far as I could tell, the Bulls and the Snakes had pretty much been the leaders of each team and had had a rivalry for as far back as paintball had been invented.

When Elise returned to us, people quieted down and huddled around her.

"Okay people, you know the rules. No boundaries. Nothing in camp is off-limits. And guys," she glanced around at a few choice people, including both Ruin and Chaos, "no messing with the people on your own team, got it? The goal is to find the center flag hidden somewhere in Camp before the Bulls do, _not_ to hit as many people as you can before the time limit is up.”

I looked around at the group. Our team was made up of every person who wanted to play that hailed from the marble barracks: The Medusa and gorgon children all wearing goggles and swinging around guns and weirdly improvised paint-bows; the flamboyant siren kids who looked like they’d rather be on the other team just so that they could go up against the gorgon offspring; only some of the gorgeous empousai daughters because most of them chose to sit the game out as to not mess up their makeup; the mismatched-eyed manticore children, none of whom looked happy about not being able to use their throwing knives and axes; the pale venti kids flitting around cheerfully like moths around a bug zapper; and the scythian dracaena kids with their long claw-like nails curled around paintball guns.

You could definitely call us a mismatched group, but when I took a glance back at the Bulls’ team, I saw they had even more variety between the Minotaur, harpy, kobaloi, sphinx, and Kampe kids. Not to mention it was a very unorthodox game of paintball, too. We wore no head gear like masks, which was probably dangerous, but the children of the monsters didn’t seem to care. I’d never played paintball before, so I wouldn’t know if we were playing a made-up version or what, but everyone here knew the game so well, they could’ve easily been the ones to make up the rules for it in the first place.

Earlier, Chaos had tried to tell me about how the paintball guns worked, and I had totally spaced out. He gave me a permanent marker instead, telling me that it would hurt a heck of a lot more if I got shot up close, but using anything not resembling a knife would probably mean I wouldn’t get to land a hit on anyone.

Everyone was jumpy and twitchy while Elise sorted us into groups. The fog was definitely not helping. It made everyone antsy, like they just wanted to get down to the battle already.

Elise ended up putting me with a small group of leftover kids that were meant to search the smaller buildings in Camp for the flag. Lamia had promised it was hidden in plain view, but might be hard to get to.

Chaos was put in a different group, a bigger one whose job it was to go around and eliminate opponents. I was a little nervous at first, because I didn’t know anyone else in my group, but they seemed happy enough to have me.

As Lamia started counting down from ten, our huddle broke up, ready to run off into the mist. The fog mixed with the growing darkness around us had made visibility low, and I assumed that was just the way the dual-bloods liked it.

"Three! Two! One!" We all counted down with Lamia before charging off into the fog. We had approximately sixty seconds of immunity before we could start shooting at one another. Apparently, if we got hit with any paintballs or slashed with any markers, we had to go back to where we'd started on the field and wait for the others until the game was over. I followed my group up the side of the valley and ran towards the Forge to check for the flag there. On the way, we passed the pair of Kampe kids. Someone shot them both before I could get close.

We funneled into the Forge and spread out, running between the anvils, looking up and down the walls of tools.

“What’s the flag look like?” I asked a boy searching beside me. It took me a second to recognize him in the low light, but I realized it was the son of the manticore I’d met yesterday, Finley.

He spoke in his thick Irish accent, “It’s huge and green; ya won’t miss it if you spot it.”

Someone else called from the other end of the building, “I don’t think it’s here, Finley!”

“Alright then, we’ll go over to the library next.”

Some people groaned, but we all filed out. We ran as a unit, closely knit. On our way across Camp, we encountered another small group from the other team, and we wiped them out, but not before losing some of our own. The campers who got hit whined and started trudging discontentedly down the hill to the field in the center of Camp. Finley had a couple of green splatters of paint across his chest, and he grinned and told me, “Good luck!” before heading off with the other shot players.

We continued our trek towards the library, and when we got there, only a couple of kids went in, it was such a small building. They almost immediately rushed out, shouting, “Run!” They were closely followed by a lumbering group of Minotaur kids, chasing them out of the building. They all screeched with laughter and we fanned out to lose our pursuers.

I ran like the wind into the foggy night, and before I knew it, all was silent around me. Maybe there hadn’t been enough Bulls to chase all the Snakes. Now I was alone in the mist.

I did a three-sixty, trying to figure out where I was, when a distinctly familiar voice sneered, “Oh, look what we have here.”

Recognizing the voice immediately, I groaned, “Ruin, what a _lovely_ surprise. I’m afraid Chaos isn’t here, though. You’ll have to go look for your satirical arch-rival somewhere else.”

Out of nowhere, a sharp pain erupted in my cheek. I lifted my hand to my face and felt the paint drip off my fingers. “What the—? Don't you know we're on the same team, _fatuus_?"

The shots kept coming. I rolled my eyes and started to walk away, trying to ignore the continual pelting of pellets from Ruin. I turned to look at him, but before I could, another paintball hit me right in the forehead.

I realized that there were more people here than just Ruin. His ever-giggling flock of friends, no doubt. They didn’t speak up, but they did laugh a little at my discomfort. I rubbed my cheek, which stung like someone had whipped a rubber band at me at very high velocity. It wasn’t helping that my head was already aching from whatever that spider had told me about this morning... Air pressure, was it?

“Don’t mind me,” Ruin said calmly, his voice like acid in mock sweetness. “Just, you know, getting some revenge.”

In the fog, I couldn’t see all that much, so it was completely a shock when a well-placed kick to my ankle from behind sent me crumpling to the ground. I was about to fly to my feet when someone threw their foot into my ribs. I coughed and gasped for air, but more kicks kept coming. The dirt on the ground was cold and the grass blew slightly in the wind. I couldn’t hear anyone else nearby, other than the laughing from Ruin’s friends.

With the wind fully knocked out of me, I thought about my options here. There were maybe two or three other kids pummeling me. I had... nothing to defend myself with; just the permanent marker that Chaos had given me before the game had started, but what was I going to do with that, draw on their faces? I had been in fights before, a lot of them actually, but I’d never been this outmatched before. At least four against one, literally kicking their opponent when they’re down.

I choked out, “This is about me interrupting your wonderful singing yesterday, isn’t it?”

Ruin’s sweet voice sounded from above me. “No, but this is.” The toe of his shoe came into focus in front of my face right before he slammed it into my nose like it was a soccer ball and he was making a shot for the goal.

He swung back his leg for another blow, when suddenly, the other kids still shooting and kicking me vanished. I realized that something huge had rushed in and knocked them all to the ground around me. The kicking may have stopped, but now my ribs and back just ached. The other kids scrambled up, fumbling with their paintball guns, then scampered off like rats into the mist.

Ruin was left on his own, though if he was surprised by the sudden absence of his lackeys, he didn’t show it.

Someone grabbed me around the arm with a huge hand and hoisted me to my feet. I tilted a little, regaining my balance gradually. I was covered in so many paint splatters I probably looked like a walking rainbow, but my nose gushed blood and stung a thousand times worse than any paintball could’ve hurt. I winced when I tried to touch it.

Ruin now stood back with his arms crossed and his paintball gun slung over his shoulder, looking me up and down. Then his eyes flitted to the person standing next to me.

Beside me, Theodore, son of the Minotaur, stood boldly, holding his paintball gun in his arms.

Calmly, Ruin took his gun back in his hands and shot Theo right square in the chest.

When Theo didn’t move an inch, or even wince as far as I could tell, Ruin insisted, “You’re _out_ , you idiotic cow. Leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Theo said firmly in a moment of bravery, glancing at me sideways.

I looked up at him, my hand under my nose. Theo looked scared out of his mind, his eyes flitting between me and Ruin nervously, but at least his words sounded solid.

I wiped blood from my upper lip and flicked my hand in front of me, glaring at Ruin. “I got this, Theo. You don’t need to stick around.” Except, as I gasped out the words, the pain my both my head and my ribs hit me like a train.

Ruin snickered at Theo and me. “So, you’ve made friends with Bull Brain, I see. He doesn’t seem like your type, Princess. First the snake-heads, now this? When are you going to start making some useful connections around Camp?”

Ruin smiled, and I knew he was talking about himself. This seemed like an odd request, considering he just beat me up, though I just sneered right back at him. “Maybe I don’t like getting friendly with singing cannibals, Choir Boy,” I grunted out, letting a small smile play on my bloodied lips.

Alright, _maybe_ getting Ruin more angry than he already was wasn’t such a good idea, though I thought that I was starting to get him all figured out. Ruin never went up against someone right away when he got insulted, like now. Unless he was the one who started it, he must usually bide his time until he has teammates to help with the revenge. I could name a ton of kids back home who used the exact same cowardly strategy.

Ruin’s golden eyes flared, and next to me, Theo flinched a little. Ruin looked like he didn’t even know how to respond, but just then, for better or for worse, cheering went up from the campers in the valley below.

“Someone’s... got the flag,” Theo muttered, and he sounded relieved.

Ruin turned to leave, but not before giving me and Theo one last golden-eyed glare.

As he marched away, I nearly collapsed sideways into Theo, who put his hand on my shoulder to steady me.

“Thanks,” I sighed.

“Are you... okay, Ari? What happened?”

“Ruin being a coward. What else is new?” I told him, grinning as much as I could without hurting my face. “Let’s go find out who won and eat dinner, I’m starv—”

“Wait, Ariadne,” Theo told me. “You’re all... beat up.”

I waved a hand. “I’m fine,” I insisted. “I’ve been in loads of fights before.”

Theo eyed me like he didn’t doubt it, but he was still worried about me. “I think your nose might be broken.”

“What? I’m good, I just need some ice and—”

Before I could finish, Theo waved his hand over my face, mumbling something I didn’t catch, until I realized it must’ve been Latin. The pain in my temples faded to a dull ache, and my nose didn’t sting anymore. In fact, my whole body felt more numb, like the pain was still there, but it was layered beneath something else, which already felt way better than it had a couple seconds ago.

I took my hand away from my nose and wiped some blood on my pants. “Thanks, Theo.”

“I could... take you to the Sick Bay.”

"No, I'm good." I stood up straighter and walked a few paces just to show him I could, but the adrenaline was fading and it left me dizzy and wobbly.

Reluctantly, Theo nodded. "Because... you could tell Lamia—"

"Nah." I tried to shake it off like it was nothing. A bashed nose, a bruised rib, it wasn't the first injury I’d gotten in life.

Down in the field, torches were being lit, and people were huddling around, chanting, “Snake-heads! Snake-heads!”

"I guess we won." I grinned at Theo.

He smiled back, but it was kind of forced, like he was still concerned about me. I ignored it and stumbled down the hill to join my cheering cabin mates.

...

“What happened to you?” Kaia grimaced at dinner. She was sitting across the table from me with all the other snake-heads pounding on the table and congratulating each other on the win, and occasionally yelling to the other side of the room at the other team, all of whom sat utterly dejected, picking at their food.

Across the room, Theo caught my eye. I looked quickly back at Kaia and asked, “What do you mean?”

“I _mean_ ,” she echoed. “You look like you ran into a brick wall sseveral hundred timess.”

“That’s exactly what happened,” I told her, nodding enthusiastically and stuffing more food in my mouth.

Kaia shrugged, but sitting next to her, Chaos looked at me with extreme concern. He set his jaw sternly, like he didn’t quite believe the brick wall story.

"Attention, everyone!" Lamia stood on the stage at the front of the hall. The talking stopped immediately and everyone looked expectantly up at their camp director. "I'd jusst like to congratulate the Ssnakess on their mosst recent victory—"

More cheering erupted from around me.

Lamia raised her hands again to hush everyone. "Now, I don't want to interrupt your celebrationss, but we have ssomething sspecial to do tonight, don't we?"

If it was possible, the cheering this time was even louder than before.

"What's supposed to happen tonight?" I yelled to Chaos over the noise from the campers.

"Claiming, I think," he shouted back. "Undetermined kids are invited up to see if their parent will claim them. We do it almost every time the Mist gets really thick like this."

That meant that I might find out who my parent is tonight. That must've been what Theo was talking about before, on the cliff, about praying really hard today. But he also talked about making my mom proud... I wondered what she thought of my display with Ruin earlier.

"Who would like to come up firsst?" Lamia grinned holding out her arms.

A bunch of kids shot out of their seats from around the room, and Lamia picked one at random. The girl that got chosen was just a little kid, barely ten years old, by the looks of it. She had blond-almost-white hair that stuck up everywhere on her head.

"Care to remind us of your name, dear?" Lamia asked in a kind voice.

"Electra," the girl said, shyly.

Lamia nodded and bowed her head, muttering words I couldn't hear, probably in Latin or ancient Greek. After a moment, nothing happened. The girl appeared scared out of her wits; her small eyes looked panicked. Suddenly, lightning cracked outside. After the flash, the space above Electra's head starting glowing brightly, and it lit up the entire room. People oohed and awed as the light faded. Latin words floated above her head, and to my surprise, I could read them. They stated: _"Electra Raiden, daughter of a ventus, spirit of storms."_

Lamia read the words out loud to make it official. Everyone applauded and even Electra herself jumped up and down with delight, saying, "I knew it! I knew it!" Afterwards, she went to join her new siblings underneath the stained-glass window depicting a white horse running through a lightning storm.

"Who'ss next?" Lamia shouted.

It went on like that for a while, kids going up, their names glowing above their heads, and then going to join their brothers and sisters. All of the kids had gotten claimed by their parent so far, but Kaia said that it was possible that you didn't, and that if that happened you’d just have to wait until next time to try again. Overall, it was a pretty joyful ceremony.

When Lamia asked for another volunteer, I finally worked my way out of my seat.

She saw me and called, "Ariadne!" while gesturing for me to come on stage.

Last time I was up there, it was to get introduced to the Camp. Chaos had stood up to represent me, but now I had to hope my _mother_ was willing to claim me as her own. As I left the snake-heads’ table, Chaos mouthed something at me that looked like, “Good luck,” and he smiled kindly. Kaia nodded eagerly, like, _“Go on!”_

I was too nervous to thank them, so I just shuffled towards the front of the room. Climbing the steps, Lamia’s snake figure came into focus, and she gave me a fang-filled grin. I reached to itch at my arm bandage nervously until I remembered Chaos’s voice scolding me, and I let my hands fall to my sides.

When I reached the center of stage, my skin tingled from anxiousness. Everyone was watching me intently, and if anyone was extremely concerned about all my newly-forming bruises and slightly swollen nose, they didn’t announce it. I spotted my friends in the crowd and for the first time, I actually, genuinely wondered about who my monster parent was. After my three days here of watching the other dual-bloods, I’d made pathetic guesses at who I was, but none of them seemed right to me. Was I a daughter of an empousa? No, I didn’t have magic powers or pyromaniac tendencies. How about the child of a harpy? Maybe, but I doubted it.

I eyed Chaos at the Medusa table; his sunglasses over his eyes made him so hard to read most of the time, though I could tell he was still concerned over my heavily paint-splattered clothes and crooked nose. Elise smiled up at me enthusiastically, and even the little girl, Havoc, whose hair I braided this morning gave me a thumbs up. I figured that it was unlikely that I was a child of a gorgon; I had never been able to turn living things to stone, and I thought about how if I _could_ , it probably would've happened already.

Theo was watching me from below, too. Even if my monster parent was my dad, and my mother was the mortal one, I doubted I could ever be a child of the Minotaur. I was so short and narrow, especially compared to those strong, broad Minotaur kids.

Even Ruin's golden eyes met mine as I swept my gaze over the crowd. He sneered up at me from his seat. I hoped to the gods that my mom wasn't a Siren. I would’ve given the world to not be Ruin's half-sister right about then. _Anything_ would be better than that.

It turned out that I'd been too busy cowering at the fact that there was a probability that I could be Ruin's sister, that I hadn't even noticed Lamia utter the spell over me. Seconds passed in complete silence. I held my breath and I could hear my heart beating in my chest. I could've sworn that minutes went by without a single crack of lightning from outside. In fact, it seemed like years to me. The pain in my temples escalated, my nose throbbed, and my arm burned. I felt ashamed; maybe I was right about my mom being disappointed in me. Maybe I should've gone after Ruin to prove I wasn't a coward.

I shut my eyes tight and clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palms. _Please mom, whoever you are,_ I thought. _I'm sorry for being a horrible daughter; I promise to make it up to you somehow. So please, please, please tell me who you are._

A second later, I heard some members from the audience gasp, and my eyes flew open. The space above my head was glowing, just like the other kids' had been. I smiled to myself and silently thanked my mother. The light slowly faded but I kept my eyes out on the crowd of campers. I wanted to hear Lamia say the words, and for my siblings to stand up and cheer for me.

But the cheering never came. Lamia's voice never spoke the words. Everyone just stared at me, mouths hanging open. My heart rate jumped again, the anxiety flooding back into my system. My smile dropped as I looked up frantically to try to figure out what they were all staring at.

The words were already fading, but I managed to catch the first words of the phrase.

" _Ariadne Weaver, daughter of Arachne, goddess of..."_

Behind me, Lamia’s eyes were sad, but she didn’t appear all that surprised as she watched the Latin wording dissipate into the air.

I instantly recognized who my mother was; I knew the myths well enough. Arachne was a mortal that was turned into the master of spiders by the goddess Athena. _Spiders,_ I thought. _That explains a lot._ The tiny spider speaking to me that morning wormed its way into my head again. _“Us spiders,”_ it had said to me. Now I knew what it had been talking about.

Except... it didn't seem matter to anyone what the last word of that Latin phrase was, because all they really needed to know was those two words: _Goddess of..._

 _Goddess_. As in, I was a _demigod_. I stared out into the crowd. Kaia and Chaos sat next to each other, Chaos looked like he was in pain, and Kaia was gripping his arm tight, like she’d just experienced a jump-scare in a horror movie. On the other side of the room, Theo was frozen, stunned like one of Medusa’s statues.

The deafening silence was broken by a camper calling out, “She’s not even a dual-blood!”

"Demigod!" another camper yelped.

The room boomed with the sounds of curses and hateful remarks, as if it was my fault my mother happened to be Arachne.

I was absolutely paralyzed up on that stage. I couldn't move an inch, but my eyes were all over the place, watching my fellow campers yell and shout at me. The word _demigod_ pelted my brain and bounced around in it, echoing over and over again. Some people even started throwing things like silverware up at me.

I could almost feel their monster blood taking over as they turned furious and resentful. The worst part by far was that these people had been my friends, ready to accept me as family just a few seconds ago. I suddenly took everything back about what I'd thought about not wanting to have Ruin as a brother. Now, I would've traded this life for that one in a second.

I found Ruin in the crowd. He wasn’t throwing things, but he was sitting back in his chair contentedly and had a grin set on his face as wide as the sun, like he’d just won the lottery and couldn’t quite process his luck yet. He'd probably been waiting for something like this to happen.

I think it was that picture of him that snapped me back into reality. I found my legs again and walked stiffly—almost robotically—off the platform and down the aisle between the tables, campers sneering at me from all sides. I blocked it out long enough to make it out of the building. And then I kept walking.

The Camp was eerily empty. There were no lights on, leaving the buildings looking haunted and spectral. Crickets chirped and man-eating horses whinnied in the distance, but the dual-bloods were all still packed into the Mess Hall.

Before I’d known what dual-bloods were, I never much wondered about my mom. I figured that it’d be no use wondering when I’d never know anything for sure about her. I never got up the nerve to ask my dad too much about her, and all I really knew about her before tonight was that she hated birds, loved bugs, and knew a lot about Greek mythology. Even with just that information, I found the similarities between us right away.

I didn’t like birds of prey much; they scared me with their big beaks and sharp talons. That undoubtedly came from the Athena-Arachne rivalry, Athena’s sacred animal being an owl. Bugs, of course, were some of my favorite animals. I loved spiders, and now I knew why. Not to mention I could _talk_ to them now...

Arachne was once a mortal, a long time ago. She thought she was a better weaver than Athena, the goddess of crafts, so she dared her to a weaving competition. The legends said that Athena won, though my dad always told me that those in power are the ones that write history. I wondered if he knew he was directly influencing my view of Greek mythology when he taught me that.

Either way, Athena turned Arachne into a spider for her pridefulness. Most legends just call her the Mother of All Spiders, or the Ancestor of Spiders, or something like that, but when my dad taught me the old Greek stories, he always called her the _Goddess_ of Spiders. I thought back to the possibility that my dad _knew_ my mom was Arachne. Did he learn that she was a goddess from Arachne herself?

I guessed those were all questions that would have to be answered whenever I got out of this place.

I was half blinded by the fog and half blinded by tears, so when I wound up at the cliff by the Sick Bay, I was surprised. The mist out over the ocean was finally starting to let up, leaving the sea to reflect the moonlight back into the sky over the Bermuda Triangle.

Lightning wasn’t flashing outside anymore, either. Did they go on with the claiming ceremony? Or were they all still too busy calling me a traitor?

Without a second thought, I trudged towards the tree overlooking the edge of the cliff. Since my first day at Camp, I’d wanted to climb this thing. I hoisted myself up easily from branch to branch until I found a nice one to sit in, my back up against the trunk. I kind of wished Kaia was there to climb with me, just like we used to do back home in Porter, that is, until I remembered Kaia hated demigods. I got angry for just a second, blaming Kaia for bringing me here to this camp in the first place. It was all her fault.

I scratched angrily at my bandaged arm. After letting out a frustrated, strangled cry, I tore the whole thing off and let it float to the ground between the branches of the huge tree.

I heard some soft footsteps in the grass beneath me. Taking a quick glance down, I recognized their silhouette immediately.

“Go away, Chaos,” I told him.

“I spy with my little eye,” he replied, “a dual-blood in need of some guidance... and medical attention.” He jumped to grab a branch and pulled himself up into the tree.

“I said ‘go away,’” I repeated.

“Not for a million gold drachmas.” Chaos settled himself onto a branch just below mine, and I absently wondered if I was tall enough to stretch down and kick him in the head with my foot.

“You’d better not be seen talking to me, Chaos. Didn’t you hear? I’m a spy for the demigods now.”

“Then tell the demigods to stop recruiting my friends as spies.”

I glared down at him, and he gave me a knowing grin in response, though my insides did somersaults when I realized Chaos had just called me his friend.

He unzipped his jacket and brought out a roll of new bandages. “Think you can manage wrapping it yourself this time?” He passed it up to me.

I took the white gauzy stuff and started weaving it around my still green-tinged skin. Across Camp, lights flickered on in the dorm buildings.

“What happened after I left?” I asked, tying off the bandage at the edge of my wound.

Chaos shrugged, like he had barely even been paying attention to the situation. “I _may_ have given Ruin that broken nose he deserved to have gotten yesterday, I _may_ have left Elise cussing out some empousai sisters in ancient Greek over them calling you a spy, and Kaia _may_ have been about ready to pull those feathers right out of the harpy kids’ hair for uttering the words ‘demigod scum.’ But, it all happened _so_ fast, I can’t really be sure.”

I stared at Chaos. He had this annoying little smirk on his face. I no longer felt like kicking him; in fact, I kind of felt like hugging him.

“You—” I stuttered. “You finally broke Ruin’s nose? About time, _fatuus_.”

“Hey!”

“And...” I hesitated. “Kaia was standing up for me? Elise, too?”

“They sure were. They’re your friends, too, you know.”

“But I’m... a demigod.”

Chaos gave me a look, and I could almost swear he was rolling his eyes at me under those glasses of his. “Listen, Ariadne,” he told me. “You are one of the only people I’ve ever seen survive scythian dracaena venom. Aside from the venti kids, you’re the quickest-moving person I know. You're wicked awesome with those daggers of yours. To me, you're not any less of a _true_ dual-blood than you were twenty minutes ago."

A smile crept across my face.

“Besides,” he told me, swinging one leg around the branch to hop down from the tree. “I’ve never heard of a hero who could command spiders before. If you learn how to do that, it will _definitely_ be something that will set you apart from other demigods.”

I swung around from one branch to another, gracefully landing on the ground at the base of the tree. “Who knows?” I asked him. “Maybe I’ll be the first daughter of Arachne to achieve hero status. Then I really _will_ have to take Kaia’s advice and come up with names for my knives.”

Chaos threw back his head and laughed. “Come on,” he said, gesturing to the barracks in the distance. “That nose-breaking business really wore me out.”

I grinned, realizing how exhausted I was, and let him lead me back to the marble building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major life goal: Spell the word "silhouette" correctly without grammar check at least once before I die.


	9. Chapter 9

"But Chiron," Wise Girl said, pounding her fist on the ping-pong table, "we need to figure out this prophecy, now!"

"My dear, we will. Just be patient."

I stood in a messy room with a ping-pong table in the center. The blond girl and the boy with sea-green eyes were there. An old man sat in a wheelchair at one end of the table.

"Chiron,” Wise Girl insisted, ignoring the old man’s words, “why would the Oracle say that we need to ‘ _remember inclusion_?’”

"Yeah, and who are ‘ _the ones that do not belong_?’" Seaweed Brain questioned.

Chiron held his hands up to shush them.

I had no idea what the two demigods were talking about, but the wheelchair guy sure sounded like he did when he explained, "You all know that the Mist is the veil over the mortals' eyes that protects them from the truth. It makes them see what they want to see, because their minds cannot cope with reality. Sometimes it even affects demigods; you know that."

"What does that mean for this quest?" Wise Girl asked.

"The Mist can also be a physical thing,” Chiron continued, nodding to the two demigods. “A tangible object of sorts. Because of this, it is capable of being stored in certain magical places."

"Like in a holy storage unit?" Seaweed Brain thought aloud.

"Where, Chiron?" Wise Girl stammered.

"I think you know, child.”

As soon as I woke from my dream, I knew something wasn’t right. It was pretty quiet in the dorm, with just a few other people around me waking up. Bright daylight flooded into the room from the tall windows, and the constant hum of electric fans was still there.

I tried lifting my hand to rub the sleep from my eyes, but my fingers were caught in something. It was stopping me from sitting up, too. I felt it on my face and arms, like my tangled hair was in my face... but, it felt thicker than hair.

Managing to wrap my finger around a piece of it, I realized what it was. Looking up, I noticed a note was stuck in the framework of the bunk bed above me. In scrawled handwriting, it read: "How do you like your web, demigod?"

I was lying under a net.

Yanking the knots out from under the mattress, I tore it away from me and untangled my hair from it.

Some girls down the aisle of bunks from me giggled.

Across from me, Elise’s eyes snapped open, and as soon as she saw what had happened, she said, “Gods, Ari, let me help you with that.” The daughter of Medusa swung her legs out of bed, retrieved a pocket knife from under her bunk, and came over to help me cut away the net.

I flashed back to the Arena yesterday, practicing with my knives with Kaia, catching sight of Ruin holding a trident in one hand and a net in the other.

Elise reached up and snatched the note from the bunk framework and what was left of the net. “Come on,” she told me, gesturing for me to get up.

After practically rolling out of bed, I pulled on my shoes and made sure my knives were attached securely on my belt.

Before I could follow Elise downstairs, Havoc stopped us. The little girl held out her hairbrush to me and twirled her long dark hair around her finger nervously. “Aren’t you gonna braid my hair?” she asked me.

I didn’t have a chance to answer her before one of the other girls in the dorm—a tall, very pretty girl with flowing blood-red hair and eyes that were the exact same color—grabbed Havoc’s arm and pulled her in the opposite direction, muttering something.

“Candace—” Havoc whined, batting at the older girl’s arm.

“Don’t talk to the traitors, Havoc,” Candace said sharply.

Elise scowled, and looked like she was about to go punch that girl in the face.

“Just leave it, Elise,” I told her.

Reluctantly, she tore her venomous gaze away from Candace and stalked down the stairs to the lower level of the building. As we marched down the row of bunks, people gave us mean looks left and right. While I dragged my feet and kept my head down, trying not to be noticed, Elise advanced angrily and even snapped, “What are _you_ looking at?” at one boy who was glaring at us bitterly.

I didn’t exactly know how to go about thanking her, so we just walked side by side out the doors and into the warm, sunny daylight. It didn’t do much to brighten my spirits, though.

“So,” Elise said, expectantly. “Arachne, then?”

“Yup,” I replied. “Lucky me.”

Elise transferred the net from one hand to the other to join the note, and touched my arm comfortingly. “They’re just being stupid and ignorant,” she told me firmly.

“Don’t they know Arachne’s an enemy of the gods, just like the monsters are?” I grunted. “Like, Athena was the one that cursed her in the first place and everything. That’s basically the same thing that happened to Medusa!”

“Exactly,” Elise confirmed. “And the rest of Camp will realize that in a couple days, too.”

“Why are they so...” I thought about my words carefully before continuing, “blindly opposed to the concept of demigods?”

Elise shrugged, but the dark look on her face didn’t leave. “It takes smart people like me and new eyes like yours to see how stupid the rivalry is. You have to understand that most of the kids here grew up greeting their monster parentage with open arms. Not to mention dual-bloods aren’t the smartest of species... They’re easily swayed by good talkers.” I got the feeling she had some choice people like Ruin and Candace in mind when she said that. “I’m still holding out hope that, like Chaos and some others, they’ll eventually figure out that not all demigods are scum.”

“Have you ever met any demigods?” I asked. After a second, I added, “Other than me, I mean.”

Elise grimaced. “A few. Long story.”

So we went on walking in silence.

Just when I thought I’d had enough glares and sneers from onlookers, Elise and I passed a group of younger kids on a path. We moved to the right to not run into them, but the kids—most of whom had been playful and loud a second before—now quieted down, whispered to each other worriedly, and strayed way off the path to avoid getting near us.

“Fun fact,” I blurted to Elise. “Arachnophobia is the most common fear in the world.”

She smiled and turned to me. “Hey, that’s cool. Because ophidiophobia is the second most common.”

“Fear of snakes?” I guessed.

“Correct,” she told me cheerfully. She flipped her hair over one shoulder, and I remembered Chaos’s words from when I first mentioned his blond hair: _“What were you expecting? Snakes?"_

We fell back into silence, though it was a bit less daunting now. As we passed the Arena, out of the corner of my eye, I saw none other than Ruin himself, who oddly enough stayed quiet; though, I suspected it was mostly the huge, blue bruises underneath his eyes and his very crooked nose that prevented him from speaking. I almost smiled at the satisfying image of Chaos punching Ruin in the face, but the elated feeling only lasted a second before evaporating like mist. Ruin might not have felt like being very talkative right about then, but his friends and siblings made up for it by pointing at me and shouting things, not even bothering to hide the grins plastered across their faces. Ruin glanced at me, and even through his swollen face, he appeared smugly contented.

I looked away quickly, pretending not to have noticed, but Elise said quietly. “Gods, you and my brother will have to start a club.” I didn’t reply, but she continued, “If you ever get a petition started to get that son of a siren out of here, promise me I get to be the first signature.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “What is with Ruin and Chaos anyway? Ruin follows him around like a puppy, but every time he opens his mouth, Chaos just seems to get more annoyed.”

“That about sums it up,” Elise laughed. “It’s just a big family feud, is what it is. Chaos and Ruin just take it more personally than most. I figure, if Chaos is gonna hate someone that much, it might as well be Ruin. Better a coward like him than someone who actually _wants_ to fight.”

That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, because I was pretty sure Ruin _did_ want to fight Chaos, but my comment flew out the window when I saw the frustrated look on Elise’s face had returned. I realized she’d been dealing with Chaos and Ruin’s rivalry for a very long time.

I also noticed that I had, in fact, _no_ idea where Elise was leading me when we turned down a path I’d never been down before in my short time here at Camp.

Elise shook her head and ran one hand through her long, dark hair. It shined in the sunlight, and when she let the hair fall behind one ear, it better exposed the long scar running down the length of her face. I couldn’t help thinking that she was pretty in an odd yet graceful kind of way, and probably would be really popular if she went to mortal school. Except, the scar kind of interrupted her appearance. I wondered if she was self-conscious about it.

Before I could stop my ADHD self, I asked, “Hey, Elise?”

“Hm?”

“What’s your, uh... what’s your scar from?” I spouted. “When you first introduced yourself, you said something like ‘don’t let the scar scare you.’”

“Oh, this?” Elise said, reaching up to run her fingers over it and smiling as if to tell me, _No big deal. I’m glad you asked._ “A cyclops gave it to me when I was fourteen. I mean, I’m not, like, a vain person or anything, I just wish it didn’t totally mar my face. Like, it gets kind of annoying when people stare at me when I’m at the mall or whatever.” Elise was just babbling now, and I could tell that me mentioning the scar had hit a nerve; but she didn’t seem mad at _me_. “I mean, gods, it’s not my fault that that one-eyed giant had this huge wicked sword with him.”

I probably should’ve just let it drop, but I couldn’t hold in my curiosity. “A cyclops?” I exclaimed, stunned. “But... why would it want to hurt you? A cyclops is a monster, right?”

“Sure is.” Elise stopped walking, took a deep breath, and turned to me. She seemed calmer now, after that pause. “Listen, Ariadne,” she told me sincerely. “If you learn anything from your time here at Camp, it’s that just because people tell you you’re on one side or another, it doesn’t mean everything’s automatically black and white, wrong and right, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Believe me. I’ve met some rather horrible monsters in my time, along with some very problematic dual-bloods... And now, I’ve even met a pretty decent demigod.” She gave me a kind smile, and her scar stretched across her cheek.

I returned a smile, and replied, “Thanks, Elise. And...” I paused, thinking, “...for what it’s worth, I think your scar is pretty awesome.”

“Aw, thanks, Ari,” she cooed playfully, like I was her little sister. She planted her hands on her hips. “We’re here, by the way.”

We’d wound up at a small red brick building at the very edge of the camp. The Mess Hall and Arena were at our backs, and off to the left, a beat-up green minivan was parked on a gravelly dirt road leading up over the hill and out of Camp Echidna.

“Camp Offices,” Elise explained. “Lamia lives here. It’s kind of like the principal’s office. Pray you never get sent here as punishment.”

As we pushed through the swinging screen door into the hot, cramped building, I asked, “You actually get punished for stuff here?”

Elise grimaced. “Rarely.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what you had to do to get sent to the director’s office at a _camp for half monster children_.

Elise made me follow her down a narrow hallway and stop at a slightly ajar door. Over the buzz of an electric fan trying unsuccessfully to keep out the humid summer air, I could hear voices inside the room.

“Lamia, please tell me you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”

“What I’m _ssaying_ is that sshe really issn’t ssafe here. We don’t have many optionss. We need to—”

Elise pushed open the door, and the people talking inside fell silent. The slow creaking of the door on its hinges filled the heavy atmosphere.

In the small room, Lamia sat behind a desk, bent over stacks of papers and office supplies. There was one window, and a fan was stuck in it, pushing lazily at any of Lamia’s papers that weren’t under a paperweight. Chaos was practically leaning over the desk, his hands pressed flat against the surface like he had been arguing heatedly, but he straightened up when we barged in. He was decked out in his trademarked outfit complete with his shades, though the hood on his black jacket was down, leaving his close-cropped blond hair and sharp facial features exhibited for all to see.

Laelaps, the chocolate brown lab, lay on the floor with her nose resting on her paws, though when Elise and I came in, her tail slapped the floor happily and she lifted her head to greet us. Theodore was there, too, I noticed as I swept my gaze around the room. He stood in the corner of the now crowded room awkwardly, like he felt he was intruding on something, even though Elise and I were the ones that had just walked in and interrupted.

I slouched in the doorway and touched my bandaged arm nervously while Elise went to silently hand over the net and note to Lamia.

Lamia looked at Chaos as if to say, _I told you so._ And Chaos returned the look, though it was a bit dulled because we couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses.

"Are you... okay?" Theo whispered to me, like he was afraid to break the silence.

“I’m fine,” I assured, nodding. “What were you just talking about?”

Chaos scowled at Lamia, and I remembered how much respect all of the dual-bloods usually had for her. “Should I go ahead and tell her, or do you want to explain your _flawless_ reasoning for it?”

“There’ss really no eassy way to tell her, iss there?” Lamia said solemnly.

Chaos grumbled with frustration and then spat out, “Apparently, because Ariadne’s technically a _demigod_ , we’re sending her to a _demigod camp_.” His voice was full of bitterness, like his words were dripping venom.

Even Laelaps’s tail went still, her wide black eyes waiting to see what would happen next. The fan stuck in the window frame whirred away, filling the silence.

“You’re kidding, right?” Elise finally sputtered.

Lamia shook her head earnestly. “Like Chaoss ssaid, sshe’ss technically a demigod.”

“I don’t get it,” Chaos insisted, reaching up to adjust his glasses indignantly. “They wouldn’t even have a cabin there for her! It’s not like she could actually tell anyone she was the daughter of Arachne; that’d cause a panic.”

“To be honesst, sshe’ss caussing a bit of a panic here, as well.”

“Listen,” Elise pleaded. “Ari’s _fine_ here. Just give the stupider of the dual-bloods a week or two and they’ll figure out she’s not going to give them a disease by being around them.”

Lamia shook her head again, more forcefully this time. “Ariadne, you’re jusst... not ssafe here.”

My temper was rising, along with Chaos and Elise’s. I snapped, “Well, fine. I’ll just go home and forget this stupid place, then.”

Lamia appeared as if she didn’t quite know how to respond, but she continued wearily with her argument. “You’re a demigod.” She hesitated, thinking. “I can’t _allow_ you to do anything at thiss point. You belong at Camp Half-Blood, and Chiron would want to train you more, even if he didn’t know your non-mortal parent.”

“ _Bovem stercore,_ ” Elise grunted.

Theo had been completely silent so far, but he spoke up now, and surprised us all. “That’s not why you’re making her go to the other camp, though... is it, Lamia?” he asked.

We all looked at him. I inquired, “What do you mean, Theo?”

He blushed and hunched his shoulders forward shyly, trying ineffectively to make himself seem smaller. He mumbled to me, “Just... think about it. You weren’t... in any danger in the mortal world, and you... had a family to live with. You... were fine here, too. You wouldn’t fit in at... the demigod camp anymore than... you would here, now.”

“Theodore’s right,” Elise remarked. “There’s some other reason you’re not telling us, isn’t there?” she questioned Lamia, accusingly.

We all inspected the camp director as she fidgeted in her seat. Finally she admitted, “Yess. There iss.”

Both Elise and Chaos started talking quickly at once, and Theo pressed farther back into his corner.

“Lissten!” Lamia boomed. “There are ssome thingss...” She fumbled for words. “The Fates do not always reveal—”

Chaos stopped her. “This is it, isn’t it Lamia?” He looked back and forth from me to his camp director, his dark glasses glinting. “It’s what you’ve been you’ve been talking about for the past month, about how big things are happening to the—”

“Chaoss,” Lamia hissed, making Laelaps jump a little on the floor. “All we know for ssure iss that Ariadne iss a demigod. Sshe doessn’t belong here.”

Elise and Chaos burst out in protest again; even Theo chimed in this time. Laelaps let out a distressed bark.

I stayed perfectly still. The same words kept echoing in my skull, chilling my bones. _She doesn't belong here. She doesn't belong here. She doesn't belong here._

“I’ll go,” I decided.

I hadn’t realized it had come out as a whisper until Elise turned to me and said, “What?”

I cleared my dry throat and announced, “I’ll go. I don’t care about this dumb stuff about the Fates, or _big things happening_ , but if Lamia says I have to go, I’ll go.”

When it dawned on her what I was saying, Elise clenched her fists and she stomped her foot on the ground hard, just narrowly missing Laelaps’s tail. She turned on her heels and stormed out. Chaos looked like he was about to follow her, but Lamia held up a hand and said, “Don’t, dear.”

Chaos planted his feet in front of Lamia’s desk again, but he snapped his fingers at the dozing dog on the floor. Laelaps looked at Chaos as if to say, _Whatever, kid._ She stood up and stretched, and walked out the door wagging her tail after Elise.

Turning back to me, he grunted, “Now what was this crazy idea you had about going to a demigod camp of your own accord?”

“If I don’t belong here, I don’t belong here,” I stated. “Simple as that.”

Theo twisted his hands around each other in front of him, but didn’t say anything. Chaos bit his lip.

“When do I leave?” I asked Lamia.

She stood up behind her desk, the top of her single snake trunk coming into view above the folders and files. Her face had a relieved look to it, probably thankful that I’d finally agreed with her. “Now,” she replied. “That would be best. I'll drive you to the borders of Camp Half-Blood.” When she saw my face sink into a frown, she added thoughtfully, “You know, dear, I'd really give anything for it to be different. But this is for the best."

I stayed silent while I counted the amount time in my head between me getting claimed the night before, to now. Twelve hours, maybe? Not even. It had taken less than half a day for my entire newly built world to come crumbling down. No more cool dual-blood stuff for me. No jumping off cliffs for fun, chatting with spiders, or learning about magic metal weapons.

I echoed Lamia’s words to myself as she led me out of the building. _For the best. For the best._

Chaos and Theo trailed behind us, and when we passed Elise and a newly arrived Kaia sitting in the grass outside, scratching Laelaps’s ears, they all got up and joined our dismal conga line.

“Are you really going to Camp Half-Blood?” Kaia asked me, sounding more curious than worried.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” I responded. “I’d invite you along, but I’m sure you’d have a rotten time from all the demigods around.”

Kaia thought about it for a moment and then replied, “I think I’ll let you have all the fun thiss time. Promisse me you’ll sset at leasst one stink bomb while you’re there?”

“Definitely.”

“Do you have anything to retrieve from the barracks, Ariadne?” Lamia questioned me, her hand resting on the side of the old green van parked outside the Camp Offices.

I shook my head, then hesitated. “Wait a second.” My hand went to my hip, resting on one of the black daggers on my belt. “I can’t take these, can I?”

Lamia said regrettably, “No.”

I carefully unwound them from my belt and tied them up together in a bundle and presented them to Chaos. “Take them back to Finley if you want, I won’t need them anymore.”

“Sure thing, Ariadne,” Chaos said, dejection in his voice. “Don’t forget to change the bandages on your arm every once in a while. And... nice knowing you, I guess.” He scratched the back of his head and pressed his lips into a thin line.

“Yeah, you too,” I managed.

“Thiss iss all my fault,” Kaia said suddenly. “I wass jusst sso ssure I ssmelled monsster on you! I’m sshould’ve figured it out earlier.”

“It’s not your fault, Kaia. It’s okay, really.”

Her green snake eyes glittered with tears. I hugged her and she slithered away without another word.

Theodore, who looked like he was on the verge of having some kind of meltdown, sputtered out a simple, “Bye...” before turning and shuffling after Kaia back towards the Camp with an anguished look on his face.

I turned to Elise, a hard expression still frozen on her face.

She said, “Sorry I fed you all that stupid information on how everyone here would come to like you eventually.” She looked at her shoes angrily, and then tossed a split-second-long glare at Lamia.

“No worries,” I chimed, trying for a grin. “I’m sure I’ll get fed plenty of stupid information at the demigod camp.”

Elise’s face broke into a half-grin. “Alright, Spidergirl,” Elise joked. “Just promise me you won’t let yourself get completely brainwashed by those demigods over there.”

“Cross my heart.”

“Ready, Ariadne?” Lamia asked, hoisting herself into a very customized snake-tail-friendly car seat on the driver’s side of the green van.

“Yeah.”

Chaos stepped forward and opened the passenger side door for me, and after I was all buckled in and ready to forget about knowing dual-bloods even existed, I watched as the two Medusa kids and their dog grew smaller and smaller in the side mirror above the _"Objects in mirror are closer than they appear"_ warning.

As the camp car passed by a large wooden sign at the top of a small slope, I looked back one more time. The sign read, “CAMP ECHIDNA,” in big bold lettering like any mortal summer camp might have at its outskirts. I also saw Elise waving at me frantically.

I rolled down the window and stuck my head out. “What?” I yelled at her.

“Give my regards to Percy Jackson!” she called back, her hands cupped around her mouth. Beside her, Chaos was laughing and shaking his head.

The van passed over a bump in the road and I fell back into my seat, and by that time, we were too far away for me to reply.

...

I slept most of the way there, but when Lamia woke me up to tell me that we were almost there, I had to ask, “Where are we?” Looking out the window, I saw that we were on a lonely road running through some farmland. There wasn’t another car to be seen anywhere on the street.

“Long Issland, New York.”

“No way,” I exclaimed. “Florida to New York had got to be, like, _twenty hours_ of driving.”

Lamia grinned and I noticed her teeth weren’t fang-like anymore. How had that happened? “It really iss a wonder what thosse empoussa girlss can do with magic thesse dayss, issn’t it?” She patted the dashboard of the car and I got the sense that it was not just some beat-up old minivan I was riding in. Lamia’s perfectly human-looking teeth flashed back to fangs for a second, then returned to their original length.

“What do I do when we get there?”

“Just walk passt the border,” she explained. “They’ll have ssomeone there watching for new arrivalss, now that it’ss ssummer, I’m certain.”

“Wait, what’s the date today?”

“The twenty-fifth of June.”

In the back of my mind, I registered that it would be my birthday in four days. I was focusing more so on the fact that school had now ended, and my dad was probably still wondering where I was. And now that I had switched camps, I had even less of a way to contact him. I never got around to asking Chaos if I could use his phone again...

“Don’t worry,” Lamia told me, even though I hadn’t said anything. “Everything will work out exactly as it sshould,” she assured.

“How would you know that?” I inquired.

Lamia’s teeth had flitted back into fangs again. “Jusst, trusst me, dear.”

I looked back up at the pine tree on the hill. “You’re not going to wipe my memory of Camp Echidna or anything, are you?”

Lamia laughed, “No, dear. But, lissten carefully: While you are at Camp Half-Blood, you sshould sstay away from topicss concerning monsterss. The half-bloodss do not know of the exisstence of dual-bloodss.”

“Right,” I responded as a very familiar pine tree came into view on the top of the hill in front of us. “Chaos said something about it causing a panic if I did.”

“That would be an undersstatement,” Lamia said darkly, slowing the van to a stop in the middle of the road. “I’m afraid you’ll have to walk the resst of the way, dear. Good luck.”

I nodded, opening the door and sliding out of the passenger seat. “Thanks. And, goodbye, Lamia.”

She smiled in reply, and just before I slammed the car door, she responded, “Ssee you,” in farewell.

Before I could even begin to ask myself why she had said that instead of a regular goodbye, she was driving away at what looked like the speed of light.

I turned back to the pine tree on the hill, and started hiking. I noticed there was something wrapped around the tree. Once I got a closer look, I realized it was a gigantic dragon. A _real life_ dragon. I froze in place when it snarled at me and snapped its jaw a bit.

"Peleus!" someone yelled from farther down the hill.

I looked up, and saw a tall girl wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt—the same kind I’d seen in my dreams, except with the sleeves cut off—was racing up the slope to greet me. Her skin was pale except for on her nose and shoulders, where it looked a bit sunburned. As she approached me, I figured that she was maybe a year or two younger than me. Her eyes were solidly green with no depth, like someone had just colored over them with cheap paint. The girl’s hair was more unsettling to me, though. It looked like a rainbow had vomited on her head.

"Hi!" she chirped, bouncing on her heels. "Are you mortal? What's your name? Why are you here?" She pelted me with the questions like rocks.

“I’m... a demigod,” I fumbled, trying to catch another look at her eyes, though it was a little hard because she would not stop moving around.

“Oh,” she sighed. “Great! I’ll take you to Chiron right away, then.” The girl waved for me to follow her down the hill again, towards the clump buildings in the valley.

When I passed over the border, I could almost feel it, like I was crossing through a cobweb.

As the younger girl skipped like a sheep down the slope, I watched her colorful hair get tossed around by the light summer breeze. Her wavy, shoulder-length hair appeared as if it had been dyed about a hundred different colors, then sloppily dyed over once more in black, so that a few bright colors leaked out from underneath, but most of it just looked like a rainbow rolled in mud.

“So, what’s your name?” the girl questioned me curiously.

“Ariadne,” I grunted. “Ariadne Weaver.”

“Weaver, huh? Annabeth is going to love that. Her mom’s the goddess of the loom, you know.”

I just nodded along, even though, no, I didn’t know. I thought back to my mythology book and tried to remember which goddess invented the loom.

“I’m Danae, by the way.” The girl—who I was quite sure was totally ADHD now—paused and twirled a strand of hair in her finger. “Hey, that rhymed!”

“Congratulations,” I muttered, looking around at Camp Half-Blood. I didn't really know what I'd been expecting, but this was definitely not it. It had seemed smaller in my dreams. From here, I could see tiny little cottages dotting the hill, and there was an open-air dining pavilion, too.

"I'll take you to meet Chiron before we give you a tour,” Danae explained. “A demigod just walking over the borders isn't exactly the usual way we get you here.”

 _Well, I'm a pretty unusual demigod,_ I thought to myself. For the first time, I unglued my sight from Danae’s extraordinary hair, and noticed she had a sword strapped to her belt. I hoped I didn’t sound like I was prying when I asked, "Who's your godly parent?"

"Iris," she answered right away, turning to face me and walk backwards clumsily. I could've sworn those sea-blue eyes had been green a second ago... “What about you? Undetermined?”

“Yeah. I don’t know who my godly parent is.”

“Oh, so you’ll be in the Hermes cabin then,” Danae revealed.

“God of messengers?”

“Right!” she chimed enthusiastically. “How do you know so much about Greek mythology already?”

I shrugged. “My dad taught me.”

“So it’s your mom that’s the immortal one?”

I nodded, not sure if I wanted Danae to be asking me all these questions.

“That’s cool! And, we’re here,” she told me, turning back around to walk the right way. “The Big House.”

“Creatively named,” I commented, staring up at the huge house that I’d seen in my dreams. Up close and in real life, I noticed that there was a porch wrapping around the sides of it, reminding me eerily of the equally large Sick Bay back at Camp Echidna.

“Percy, Annabeth,” Danae called to a pair of campers standing on the porch. “Is Chiron teaching an archery class right now?”

“No, he’s inside,” the boy said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder towards the door to the house.

“Okay, cool. We’ve got a new camper.” Danae gestured ardently to me.

I gave a small wave as the two kids stepped out of the shade of the porch and came down the steps together. The boy’s face held a permanent half-grin, but when I turned to see the girl, I was met with a downright malicious glare.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It's okay, Annabeth. Spiders are probably more scared of you than you are of them." -Annabeth's dad at some point probably


	10. Chapter 10

I recognized them instantly, and I have to admit, I had thought they'd be taller. The one I knew as Seaweed Brain looked... messy. His black hair was shaggy and his orange camp shirt was only half tucked into a sword belt. The girl looked neater, with curly blond hair, like I’d seen before. Though, her eyes took me by surprise. As I caught sight of her stormy gray irises, I decided that those were something you just couldn't capture the full essence of in a dream vision.

“Hey, welcome to Camp,” the boy greeted, holding out a hand. “I’m Percy.”

“Ariadne.” I shook his hand and asked, “Is your last name _Jackson_?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, looking a little confused. “Have you... heard of me?”

“Elise says ‘hi,’” I told him.

Percy’s mouth dropped open a little in surprise, but immediately it was replaced by the usual half-grin again, like I hadn’t said anything to jar him. “This is Annabeth.” He gestured to the blond girl beside him.

Wise Girl was still giving me an evil look when Percy nudged her.

“Hello,” she managed.

"Hi," I replied, just as stiffly. I didn't know why I was being so cold. Maybe it was because I'd spent the last few days at Camp Echidna learning to hate demigods. Maybe it was just those striking gray eyes that seemed all too familiar somehow. I scratched at the wrappings on my arm.

Danae spoke up, breaking the silence. "Come on Ariadne, let's go see Chiron. Then we can get you a spot in Cabin Eleven."

"Cabin Eleven?" I said, following her up the steps to the Big House while Annabeth and Percy both muttered quick goodbyes and continued to talk frustratedly between themselves.

Danae bounced her head. "Yeah. The Hermes cabin, remember? All the undetermined kids go there."

"You arrange the cabins by godly parent?"

“Yup. There's twelve, one for each of the Olympians. It's too bad, really, because Iris is a minor goddess and doesn't get her own cabin. I live in the Hermes cabin with all the other minor god children and unclaimed kids, instead.”

We pushed through the door and into the house.

“Cool, I guess,” I replied, looking around at the room. There was a fireplace and some comfortable-looking couches. It looked just like what I’d imagine an old grandmother’s house might look like, very unlike my small, cluttered house back in Indiana.

“It’s alright. Except, I don’t have any siblings, or if I do, they’re not claimed, so that sucks.” Danae pointed down a corridor. “Come on. Chiron’s office is that way.”

“You’re an only child, then?” I questioned.

“Yup. Like I said: it sucks. Although, I guess Percy’s all alone in Cabin Three, too.” We turned a corner and she approached a closed door at the end of a hallway. “Ha! Three, two,” she giggled as she reached up to knock on the door.

“Which god is Cabin Three for?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t laugh at the words, _Three, four_.

“Enter,” a voice called from behind the door.

“Poseidon,” Danae explained to me before pushing open the door. “Hello, Chiron,” she addressed, nodding respectfully.

“Danae,” the old man behind the desk greeted. “What can I do for you?”

“New camper,” Danae explained, stepping into the room and pulling me with her.

Like the Sick Bay/Big House comparison, Chiron’s office was a jarring imitation of Lamia’s office back at Camp Echidna. A cluttered desk with papers littering the surface sat between us and Chiron. He was definitely the same old man from my dream the night before, but now he wasn’t sitting in his wheelchair. He was standing upright. On four _horse legs_.

“You’re a centaur,” I marveled.

“Yes, I am,” the half-horse, half-man said, as if I needed confirmation. “I am Chiron, activities director. And you are?”

Chiron was eyeing me with suspicion. Maybe he was always like this, careful and attentive, or maybe I was just giving off my regular trouble-maker aura that make teachers want to put me in the front row of seats in their class so that they can keep an eye on me at all times.

“I’m Ariadne Weaver,” I told him.

"She came over the border without a satyr,” Danae reported. “But she knows about the gods and everything."

Chiron nodded, but did not take his scrutinizing eyes off of me. He stroked his beard and mumbled, “Danae, can you please leave us a moment?”

“Sure, Chiron. But I was going to take her on a tour later.”

He finally turned away from me to talk to Danae directly. “You still have duties watching the borders of Camp for new arrivals,” he told her firmly. “I’m sure Ariadne can get a tour from another camper. Thank you, Danae.” Chiron’s voice was calm and educated. It was precise, like Theodore’s back at Camp Echidna, except without the pausing and stopping all the time.

“Sure thing.” Danae gave me one last glance, like, _“Good luck,”_ and backed out of the room, still twirling a strand of her colorful hair around one finger.

Chiron motioned for me to sit down in the chair across from him, right in front of his desk. After seating myself, he shuffled some papers around on his desk and asked me, “Danae said you know about the gods already?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “My dad taught me.”

“Did he teach you the myths and stories, or about the gods existing in our modern day America?”

“Just... the myths.” I spoke slowly, my mind racing to think up a convincing lie. One look at Chiron’s three-thousand year old eyes, though, and I knew I was going to be hard-pressed to come up with a plausible story. Instead, I did what I did best. I went off on a tangent. “Like... how you’re the trainer of heroes. You taught Theseus, Achilles, and Hercules.”

“And many more,” Chiron agreed. “I hope to train you, as well, Ariadne. But first, how did you come to the conclusion that the gods are genuine in existence? Did your father know, as well?”

I thought about this. “No,” I decided. “He didn’t. I figured it out on my own.”

“Is your father dead?”

“No.”

“You ran away from home?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Chiron pondered this for probably a full thirty seconds before excusing me, telling me to find a senior counselor to show me around.

I left the room as Chiron stood on his white horse legs stroking his beard and flicking his tail. I shook my head out and tried to recall the path we took into the Big House in the first place.

...

To my surprise, I found Seaweed Brain and Wise Girl still talking outside the Big House. They seemed to be arguing about something, but I didn’t mind interrupting.

“Percy, Annabell,” I called. “Are either of you a senior counselor, or whatever?”

“It’s Anna _beth_ ,” Annabeth corrected, coldly. “And, yes. We both are.”

“Great,” I chimed. “Chiron said I needed a tour.”

“We’re kind of busy,” Annabeth started, but Percy talked over her.

“Sure, we’ll give you a tour,” Percy said, looking grateful for me coming to break up their debate. Maybe he had been the one losing their argument.

Annabeth looked like she might have punched Percy, but he just waved for me to follow him and walked off in the other direction.

The three of us trudged through the camp. It was just a more awkward version of my first day at Camp Echidna, really. Except the one showing me around wasn’t my half-snake best friend, it was two super powerful hyperactive demigods, one of which kept giving me looks like she wanted to rip my head off.

Percy checked off buildings and activities as we passed them. "Stables, forge, volleyball courts, arena.”

It was all the same to me, except the demigods looked more humanoid than the dual-bloods. There were no patches of scaly skin poking out from underneath sleeves, or feathers growing from the sides of heads. Though, I counted just about as many bandages, casts, and splints as I’d seen in Camp Echidna. Maybe there really was some fun, dangerous stuff to do around here.

“What’s that bandage on your arm for?” Annabeth asked me suddenly.

I scratched my wrist, at the edge of the wrappings. “I got bitten.”

“Bitten by what?”

“A... dog.”

Annabeth put on a concerned face, though to me it looked a bit fake. She reached for my arm, saying, “You know, we can put some nectar on that, and it’ll heal right—”

I snatched my arm away and crossed my arms. “No,” I insisted, thinking that Annabeth was probably smart enough to know that dog bites didn’t leave huge green scars unless something was _really_ off about that canine. “No thanks.”

Annabeth didn’t say a word the rest of my tour; she just stared at the ground while we walked, like she was thinking hard about something, trying to figure out a puzzle. She only snapped out of her transfixion when we came up to a circle of small buildings, all of them looking drastically different in appearance.

One of them had a thatch roof, one was grand and done in white marble like the barracks that Chaos’s family stayed in back at Camp Echidna. One was even enclosed in barbed wire, which I thought was kind of unnecessary because all the campers seemed to be steering clear of the red-painted building anyway, without the help of the overkill fencing.

"And these are the cabins," Annabeth said, holding her arm out to the twelve little assorted houses.

"One for each Olympian god," I said, remembering what Danae had said.

“Yeah,” Percy confirmed. “Come on, this one over here is mine.”

Together, we ambled over to one of the first cabins in the circle: a long, flat building with tiny seashells embedded in the rock that it was constructed from.

"Poseidon, right?" I recalled. "God of the sea."

"That's right." Percy looked incredibly proud of his tiny cabin.

I could see through the screen door that it was empty of campers, because most of the bunks inside looked unused. “And you don’t have any siblings?”

Percy nodded his head. “Tyson lives in here with me, but other than that, no. Prophecies... what can you do, right?”

“ _Prophecies_?”

“Long story.”

"Oh. So where do you live, Anna?"

" _Beth_. Anna _beth_." The blonde girl clenched her teeth.

"Gods, sorry,” I apologized, not exactly meaning it. “Touchy.”

"I'm in Cabin Six. I’m a daughter of Athena, goddess of wisdom and battle." The way Annabeth announced her parentage, it sounded like something she’d rehearsed in front of a mirror. She pointed to a blue and gold cabin across the field; a much less threatening-looking structure than the red one with barbed wire. Except, Cabin Six had an owl carved over its doorway; Athena's sacred animal. Even from here, it made me jumpy, like it was watching me or something.

The fact that Annabeth was Athena’s daughter didn’t exactly surprise me, but also made me anxious. Although I knew that Annabeth couldn’t possibly guess that my mom was Arachne, she sure seemed to hate me enough to know. If this daughter of Athena was giving me deadly glares now, I didn’t like to think about what she’d do if she found out who my mother was.

"Where's Cabin Eleven?" I asked quickly, wanting to get as far as possible from the Athena cabin and its inhabitants. "I'm supposed to stay there."

"I _know_ that," Annabeth hissed.

"I wasn't testing you to see if you did." Anger bubbled inside me.

She jutted out her chin and put her hand on her hip, or more precisely, the dagger in her belt.

"Hey, Ariadne?" Percy interrupted.

“What?” I spat out. Annabeth had not taken her stormy eyes off of me.

“Cabin Eleven is over there.”

...

The rest of the day went pretty much like that. I found it hard to not punch some of those snot-nosed demigods right in the face. Apparently I wasn't the only one, because everywhere I went, campers were bickering with each other. Athena kids and Ares kids, Aphrodite kids and Demeter kids, etcetera. Though, the worst cabin by far was the Hermes cabin. It was full to bursting and I knew the minute I walked in that I would _not_ enjoy living there.

Percy and Annabeth left me standing in the doorway to one of the last cabins in the circle, a brown building with paint that looked like it wanted nothing to do with the walls, the way it was peeling off of the cabin’s sides. A caduceus, the symbol of Hermes, hung above the doorway. _At least it’s no owl,_ I told myself. Not to mention the two snakes coiled around the staff kind of reminded me of Kaia and Chaos.

I stepped into the building. I noted that it was strikingly similar to my cramped room back in Indiana, where everything seemed dark and dusty, except there were tons of kids in here, and no room to sulk or play with my yo-yo by myself. Immediately, an impish-looking kid with a sharp nose and a mischievous smile greeted me.

“You’re the new girl, right? Welcome to Hades,” the boy told me, looking me over, probably trying to judge how long I’d last in this place. “Certain death: imminent,” he decided.

Another boy, who was maybe a little taller than the first, but otherwise appeared exactly the same, pushed him out of the way. “Don’t listen to my idiot brother; he’s just trying to scare you. Welcome to the Hermes cabin.” He stuck out a hand to shake. “I’m Travis Stoll. Your head counselor.”

Before I could introduce myself, his brother shoved him out of the way. “Don’t believe him, _I’m_ the head counselor of this fine establishment.” He waved around at the rowdy kids, trash-littered floor, and messy bunk beds.

Travis smacked his brother across the back of the head. “No, Connor, I’m pretty sure _I’m_ the counselor of this pigsty.”

Connor jabbed his brother in the ribs. “You are not!”

“Are to.”

“Are not.”

“Are _to_!”

“Are _n_ —!”

A short girl pushed through the two arguing brothers forcefully. She spoke with a heavy Hispanic accent when she shouted, “Shut up, you morons. You’re both _co-counselors_ ; now knock it off before you give the newbie a headache.”

The two boys backed off to go argue somewhere else in the cabin, which seemed good enough for the girl. She was a little on the chubby side, and not any taller than me that I could tell, but she seemed to tower over even those elfish-looking brothers when she placed her hands on her hips and set those dark eyes on me from behind her square glasses.

“I’m Laurel, nice to meet you.” She didn’t hold out a hand to shake. “Welcome to your new _temporary_ home.” She sputtered out the word “temporary” like it was a hilarious joke. She continued with, “That is, unless you’re another Hermes kid. Then you’re stuck in this place forever.”

I looked around at everyone shouting and blaming each other for this or that. Hermes was the god of thieves, I remembered. His children—at least the claimed ones—appeared just the same, looting each other’s backpacks and sleeping bags at every chance.

“Gods, I’m glad my father is the mortal one,” I muttered for show, even though I was well aware I’d probably be stuck here for a very long time no matter who my parents were.

Laurel laughed, “Congratulations, it looks like you’ve already figured out exactly how horrible the Hermes kids are. If you keep learning who to trust as this rate, you’ll survive just fine here. Let me find you a place to sleep, Ariana.”

“It’s Ariadne,” I responded. “And, you’re not a daughter of Hermes?”

“Unclaimed,” she explained. “Hopefully I’ll get out of here sooner rather than later.”

“How do you know that Hermes isn’t your Olympian parent?” I questioned.

Laurel blew some of her dark hair out of her face and rolled her eyes. “My dad is as mortal as they come. It’s definitely my mother’s side that is the freakish half of my family.”

She walked over to the corner of the cabin, stepping over trash and strewn blankets as she went. A small space had been set up where a sleeping bag and plastic crate of possessions were pushed up against the wall. Looking around, I noticed there were other little niches like this lining the cabin walls, occupied by campers that didn’t look anything like the sharp-featured Hermes kids. I followed Laurel over and accepted her offer to sit down across from her on the wrinkled, worn sleeping bag.

“You don’t seem to hold the gods in very high regards,” I commented, sitting with my legs crossed and tracing the lines in her blanket where old threads had come loose from the fabric.

Laurel shook her head. “I’ve been stuck here for almost a year, now, with no sign of a godly maternal figure in sight.”

“A _year_?” I asked, astonished. “Don’t the gods—”

“Care about us?” Laurel said. “Not particularly.”

“But don’t they have the time to claim you? Like, it can’t be that hard to take a minute or two out of their day to just _recognize_ their kids, right?”

Laurel looked me straight in the eyes, a pitied look on her face, as if to say, _If only you knew, kid_ , but what she said out-loud was, “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

As I anxiously ran my hand over the bandage on my arm, I glanced around at all the campers in the cabin. The ones who had bunks all kind of looked like Travis and Connor, with elfish features and turned-up noses, so they were probably their half brothers and sisters. They sat on their bunks, talking with siblings, occasionally looking down on the sullen kids camped out on the floor with old sleeping bags and crates of belongings with disdain. The Hermes children didn’t want the unclaimed kids in here any more than they did themselves, I realized. It was depressing to look at.

“I need to get out of this place,” I muttered.

“Good luck with that,” Laurel announced. “But until then, grab a sleeping bag and make yourself at home.” She pointed to a door at the back of the cabin.

I rose from my seat on the floor and stepped carefully over other peoples’ sleeping areas to make my way to the back of the room. Upon reaching the door, I turned the knob and pulled it open to reveal a messy pile of blankets and pillows flooding out of the disorganized closet like an avalanche of linens. The bundle of sheets fell around my ankles, sending puffs of dust into the air.

While some of the Hermes kids laughed, Laurel came over to help me pick up the mess.

“Was... that a prank?” I asked, leaning over to snatch a sleeping bag from the top of the pile.

“Oh, no,” Laurel assured me, wrapping the blankets into a ball and tossing them carelessly back into the closet. “I doubt it was on purpose. This closet has always been a mess. Not to mention, the Hermes kids’ pranks usually involve a little more... shock value.”

She handed me a pillow from the jumble of blankets, but before I could take it, she dropped it with a yelp.

“Just like _that_ ,” she hissed.

While the cabin burst into laughter at Laurel’s reaction, I looked down at the pillow now lying flat on the ground. A dark shape crawled across it slowly, making its way from one end to the other on eight spindly legs.

“Alright,” Laurel growled at the rest of the campers. “Who’s responsible for _this_ one?”

I knelt down and put my hand out for the giant spider to crawl onto, and it happily did. It was the size of my palm, and scurried around my wrist playfully. Standing back up, I patted my finger on the huge arachnid’s head. I could’ve sworn it was humming with delight.

Laurel inched back from me. “At least we know you aren’t a daughter of Athena.”

I held out my hand to Laurel and she nearly screeched, jumping backwards and pressing herself against the wall. I laughed, “Looks like you might be, though.”

“No,” Laurel answered, her tone steely. “I just _don’t like_ spiders.” She turned green as the spider ran up my arm to my shoulder. “Excuse me,” she stuttered, practically tripping over another camper while trying to get back to her space in the corner of the cabin.

The rest of the campers were staring at me, though, as I set the spider on top of my head. “What’s up, little guy?” I asked it.

_Not much, miss. How are you today?_

With a start, I remembered my new superpower. _Right,_ I thought to myself. _I’m, like, Spidergirl now, or whatever._

“I’m pretty good,” I told it. “Relatively,” I added.

A Hermes boy standing nearby looked at me like I’d grown a third eye, and inched away in the opposite direction. Another girl raised her eyebrows and looked me up and down like, _Who’s this freak?_

I glared right back at them, and could sense the spider on my head chuckling.

“Hey, new girl,” the taller of the Stoll brothers—I already forgot which one was which—called to me. “If you’re not going to put that thing back in the closet for the next newbie to find, put it to good use and...” He trailed off. “Um, there’s one on your arm.”

Raising my elbow, I saw yet another arachnid crawling lazily up my arm to join the other on my head.

 _Ooh, and there goes my cousin,_ the newcomer announced.

I looked down at myself, and saw one more small, eight-legged bug clinging to the fabric on my shirt. Gathering them all up in my hands, I heard a camper cry, “Travis! How many spiders did you put in that closet?”

The Hermes cabin co-counselors sauntered up to me in unison, looked me over with mischievous grins as I played with the arachnids dancing on my fingers, and said together, “Oh, this is going to be _awesome_.”

...

Ten minutes later, the Stoll brothers—whom I could finally tell apart from the other now—had me camped out behind Cabin Six, up to something that would _definitely_ double whatever amount of time my dad had planned for me to be grounded when I got back. It would probably also land me in deeper disapproval with Annabeth, but that was kind of what I was aiming for at this point.

Laurel, who had wanted absolutely _no_ part of Travis and Connor’s evil plans, had elected to stay back at Cabin Eleven, and clean up the mess we’d made while searching for every single last spider in Hermes’s linen closet.

Now, they were all lined up in front of me in the grass like little soldiers of every size ranging from as big as my palm, to as small as my thumb.

“You ready?” Connor asked quietly, rubbing his hands together maniacally.

“Yup,” I whispered back. I knelt down in the grass and lowered my face down close to my spider friends. “You guys all set?”

A murmur of tiny little sounds echoed back to me inside my head, stating stuff like, _Aye, aye, captain!_ in enthusiastic voices. I couldn’t help but laugh.

Travis and Connor looked at each other nervously, probably doubting if their new pranking jackpot was completely sane or not.

Then, Travis gave me the all-clear, and I started carefully setting the arachnids one by one under the back window of Cabin Six. Single file, they squeezed themselves through a hole in the screen over the opening.

As I did so, Connor gave me a whispered vote of confidence that might have even passed as a pep talk. “I don’t know how you’re doing that freaky stuff, but whatever god, monster, or titan you prayed to for those powers; they’ll be put to good use today.”

“What are you doing?” a voice sounded curiously from behind us.

We all whipped our heads around to be met with an eyeful of rainbow-colored hair.

“Danae!” Connor yelped. “Get down! Aren’t you supposed to be on lookout today?”

Danae dropped to the ground and crawled over to us, whispering, “Aren’t _you_ supposed to be... not behind the Athena cabin?”

“Shh!”

The daughter of Iris turned to me, scratching her freckled, sun-burnt nose. “Day one and the Stoll brothers have already drafted you to their cause?”

I smirked. “If their cause is essentially using all available power to large-scale prank the Athena kids, I’m cool with being drafted.”

A shriek sounded from inside the cabin. And then another. And another.

Soon, the sound of screaming arachnophobic brainiac kids could be heard throughout the circle of cabins. I peeked around the side of the building, and saw campers with wild blond hair—ruffled from being combed through to get spiders off of—flooding out of the cabin.

I even spotted Annabeth herself, painstakingly swatting at her own clothes to free them of bugs.

Connor and Travis were sitting back in the grass with their fists in their mouths, trying not to laugh. From the looks of their red faces, they were having a hard time hiding their delight at the Athena kids’ reactions. Danae was shaking her head at them, saying, “You guys are _horrible_ ,” but smiling all the same.

“You!” boomed a voice. It came from the back window to the cabin, right above my head.

I turned to see a very disheveled-looking boy with curly blond hair and stormy gray eyes, like Annabeth, with a furious expression pressed up against the screen on the window.

The mischievous looks were wiped right off of the Stoll brothers’ faces, and Travis stuttered, “Why, h-hello there, Malcolm. What’s up, buddy?”

Malcolm promptly disappeared from the window, and by the sound of his stomping feet, he was headed for the door.

“Run?” I hissed.

“Run,” the Stoll brothers agreed in unison.

We all scrambled up from the ground, not bothering to brush the grass off of our clothes as we made a beeline for the woods.

Connor and Danae laughed when Travis tripped over the root of a tree at the edge of the forest, and he cried, “Connor!”

I took a quick look back at a crowd of Athena kids descending upon Travis like rabid wolves.

“Sorry, brother!” Connor called back. “It’s every demigod for himself!”

Travis’s cursing in ancient Greek faded as we three survivors delved deeper into the trees. Connor and Danae were still cracking up, and I couldn’t help but think that the demigods were alright. Maybe some of them were a little stupid, and the ones like Annabeth were kind of mean, but they were alright. Not any worse than the dual-bloods, anyway.

I recalled the sight of Annabeth raking her hands over her clothes and through her hair, trying to get the spiders off of her, looking very much like little miss Chloe Adeline Everly from my science class. I burst out laughing, and had to slow down to catch my breath. Stumbling to a stop, I leaned against a tree. Looking around, I realized that I’d lost Connor and Danae along the way somehow. It didn’t surprise me; I was probably a much faster runner than both of them.

Breathing in the fresh air and feeling the bark of the tree on my back, I couldn’t help thinking about the small forest behind my house, and how Kaia and I would race back there, and, of course, how I would always win.

Just as I was thinking it was about time to climb up a tree—something I hadn’t done in about a week, and frankly, I was itching to do again—someone entered the small clearing that I’d stopped to rest in.

I had been expecting maybe Connor or Danae to come and find me, but the newcomer looked neither impish nor colorful in any way. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The boy, dressed all in black with chalk-white skin and sunken dark eyes, saw me, and looked only mildly surprised. He stuffed his bony hands in the pockets of his aviator’s jacket.

“New to Camp?” he asked simply.

“Yeah,” I stated, growing suspicious. “Why?”

“What’s your name?”

I considered ordering him to answer my question first, but then decided that even though this guy looked maybe eleven years old at most, he didn’t seem like the kind of person to take orders.

Instead, I answered, “Ariadne Weaver. You?”

The boy tugged his hands out of his pockets and proceeded to fiddle with a silver ring on his finger. “Nico di Angelo,” he replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ *Strums guitar* ♫
> 
> Hush, little character, don't say a word  
> The author's gonna get you  
> an equally outcasted demigod friend to talk to
> 
> ♫ *Strums guitar* ♫


	11. Chapter 11

Nico di Angelo appeared years younger than me, but his oil-slick eyes were sunken and aged, and he spoke with authority when he informed me, “You shouldn’t be in the forest alone.”

I almost laughed. This fifth-grade kid was trying to order me not to go places by myself. “Aren’t _you_ in the forest alone?” I demanded.

“Yeah, except, I’m _armed_.” He placed one pale hand on his hip, and for the first time, I noticed the chain belt looping around his skinny frame, holding a wicked-looking black sword at his side.

I did a double-take. That sword looked so familiar...

“Is that... Typhonian Lead?” I questioned. The only weapons I’d seen around Camp Half-Blood so far were made from a shimmering bronze material; nothing like the daggers and swords back at Camp Echidna. “Where’d you get that?”

Nico looked taken aback. His eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. But then he wiped the look off his face, shaking his head and responding, "No, it's not actually Typhonian Lead. It's Stygian Iron, which is similar. Have you heard of it?"

I nodded, growing increasingly interested with this young demigod. "My friend mentioned it once, briefly,” I explained, remembering Chaos and Finley’s lesson on magic metals.

"Is that where you learned about Typhonian Lead, too?"

I nodded, even though I was beginning to think I should be more cautious of what information about Camp Echidna I shared. Something told me that this demigod was different than the rest, though.

"So, who's your friend?" Nico inquired. "They would have to be a demigod to know anything about Stygian Iron, much less about Typhonian Lead, which is even rarer than my iron sword here. But you’re new, so you wouldn't have many friends around here yet. And you lived with your mortal parent before you came here, correct? So, who’s this friend of yours that knows so much about godly metals?"

I stood, staring at him, jarred by his deduction. Nico didn't grin, as if he were proud to have tricked me, he seemed more... concerned. His eyebrows knit together and his eyes seemed to grow even darker, if that was possible.

My eyes flitted back and forth, as if I'd find all the answers to my problems somewhere in the scenery. My hand went to my arm, nervously scratching the wrappings over the area where a faint green scar would still be.

Nico was staring at me, waiting for an answer.

I finally got myself together, and was about to tell the most convincing lie I could muster up, when the words, "Can you keep a secret?" slipped out of my mouth.

The skinny boy straightened up and inspected our surroundings. Connor and Danae were nowhere in sight, and I couldn’t hear anything except for the soft rustle of tree leaves. Still, Nico must’ve deemed it not a good place to talk, because he dictated, “Walk with me,” and started off, trudging deeper into the woods.

I didn’t mind taking orders from a fifth-grader now, because this kid was obviously more than an average half-blood, and definitely nothing like Kaia had promised the demigods would be like. This boy was calm, collected, and cold.

We hiked aimlessly through the woods in silence, and disregarded any passing monster noises. I didn't bother asking where we were going, but the fact that every once in a while I heard an out of place roar or growl made me anxious to return to the safety of Camp.

Nico still had his hand on his black sword, and I could see that the silver ring on his finger was in the shape of a skull. It looked a little like something you might get out of a cheap prize box at a Halloween party, except it glinted in the light and I could almost _feel_ it radiating energy.

All at once, Nico stopped. “We can talk here.”

We were in a large, relatively open area. A cluster of rocks in a giant heap were piled in the center. Around it, presumably where trees had once been, were scorched stumps and dead branches. It looked like a war zone.

“That’s because it was,” Nico remarked, even though I hadn’t said anything. He stood motionless on his feet, surveying the damage of the clearing.

“What happened here?” I questioned.

“The Battle of the Labyrinth,” Nico explained, tugging anxiously at his skull print T-shirt. He trekked over the burnt grass on the ground to the pile of boulders. “This used to be Zeus’s Fist.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

Nico sighed. “Okay, not _actually_ Zeus’s fist. It just looked a lot like a big hand, when it was still upright. Then a one-hundred-handed giant killed Kronos’s holy jailer, Kampe, by throwing the rocks at her, and we were left with Zeus’s... big toe.”

“I didn’t understand a word of that,” I admitted.

“It doesn’t matter,” Nico insisted. “What matters is that now, everybody thinks this place is cursed. Not even the dryads come here. So, it’s safe to talk.”

I had assumed that that was to be my cue to spill everything or the spindly eleven-year-old in front of me would slice me up with his magical light-banishing sword, but instead, Nico showed that he already seemed to know my secret.

“You’re a dual-blood,” he stated, not even bothering to put it in question form.

I thought briefly about saying, _“What? I think you mean, ‘_ half _-blood,’ buddy. I don’t know what_ you’re _talking about.”_ But I figured that if Nico knew about dual-bloods, I should hear him out on what he had to say about them. So I simply replied, “Yeah.”

Nico nodded, but a confused look crossed his face. "But, what are you doing here, at a demigod camp? You should be at Camp Echidna. Don't tell me you're actually spying on these guys."

"You _know_ about the dual-blood camp?" I asked, my voice hushed, even though Nico had told me it was okay to talk openly here.

"Of course I do." He held his arms out, palms up. "I'm a son of Hades."

I didn't know if I was supposed to be scared or relieved, but that made a lot of sense, and explained all the skulls. "Have you been there? To Camp?"

Nico shook his head. "No, not to Camp Echidna. I've been to the other demigod camp though. The Roman one in San Francisco; Camp Jupiter. I was planning on going to CE next, but..." He trailed off, seeing the sad expression on my face.

"Whatever," I dictated. "It doesn't matter. We're demigods; we couldn't go there either way."

"You're a demigod? But—"

"I'm a daughter of Arachne, the _goddess_ of spiders." I clenched my teeth as I said it.

Nico sighed. "The dracaena mistook you for a dual-blood," he guessed. "That makes sense; you'd smell like one. There would be no way to tell the difference. It's a common misconception that Arachne isn't a goddess. The gods just like to cover up the facts. They do that a lot, actually,” he said, his voice turning bitter.

"Yeah, and I've got a slight immunity to venom, too,” I told him, swinging my bandaged arm out in front of me. “Anger management issues, ADHD, the works."

Nico looked at me, almost like he was worried. "I can see where that would bring up complications."

I plopped down on a rock from Zeus’s Former Fist and rested my head in my hands. "That's an understatement."

Nico came over and sat down next to me, radiating coldness like an open freezer. “What was the camp like?”

I shrugged. “It wasn’t a whole lot different from here. There were nice people and mean people just like here.” I rubbed my nose, thankful that whatever magic spell Theo had put on me had kicked into overdrive in the past twenty-four hours and made my bruises from Ruin nearly vanish. My hand went to my arm once again, and I remembered Chaos scolding me whenever I itched it. I ran my fingers over it now, though.

“I bet they were nicer to you there. You're probably a lot more like the dual-bloods than any demigod here.”

“Yeah, except, they all decided I was a traitor and a spy the minute they found out about my mom being a goddess.” It was horrible to think about; how I didn’t really belong at either camp.

"I know better than anyone what it's like,” Nico confided. “To be the outcast, the freak. No one likes a son of Hades. I live in the Underworld with my dad; I don’t much like visiting this place.”

“Then why do you visit at all?”

“There’s a war on,” he told me, darkly. “Deals to be made, people to plan with. Also,” he added hastily, “my stepmother tells me it’s good to get some sunshine once in a while.”

I laughed. “Well, I don’t know what kind of war plans you expect to make with these whining, stuck-up demigods. No offense to you, of course, but all I’ve seen them excel at so far is extreme pranking.”

“No offense taken,” he assured. Nico stood up from the rock he was sitting on, and twisted the silver skull ring around his finger. “And, you’d be surprised at exactly how talented some of them are... You should probably get back to Camp before they send someone looking for you. But, Ariadne,” he warned.

“Yeah?” I replied.

“Because I’m guessing you’ll probably be stuck here for a while, why don’t you give us whining, stuck-up demigods a chance, alright?”

I hesitated, but decided he was right. I _would_ be stuck here for a while. I nodded. “Sure, Nico.”

...

Meals were much different at Camp Half-Blood than at Camp Echidna. Tables were still separated by parentage, but it wasn't _optional_. On the way to dinner, Laurel explained to me that Zeus, Hera, and Artemis don't have children because they took vows never to have kids or something. Poseidon was supposed to be the same way, but he kind of broke his promise. I thought it was all just a big waste of space, because what's the point in having thirty kids stuffed into one little cabin when there were three huge ones still open?

So, that's how I ended up getting crammed in between two unclaimed kids from Cabin Eleven. We were all pushed towards one end of the table, while Hermes’s sons and daughters took the other half. Honestly, I don't know where else I'd rather sit, though. Nico, being a son of Hades, would have had to sit with Cabin Eleven, as well, I suppose, so I didn’t blame him when he didn’t show for dinner. He was nowhere to be seen, in fact; he’d disappeared off into the woods after our conversation, leaving me to find my way back to Camp by myself.

Percy sat at his nearly-empty table across from a big guy in a flannel shirt that I couldn’t see the face of. I wondered absent-mindedly if that was the other person that Percy had mentioned lived in Cabin Three with him. What was his name? Tyler? Tyrus?

I glanced around at the other tables. All of them were equally laughable in their own ways. Any Aphrodite or Apollo kid here probably had a bigger ego than all of Ruin Abaddon's family combined. The Ares kids were big and buff and all about brute force; they reminded me hauntingly of Theo's older siblings.

Annabeth was still giving me this evil glare whenever I happened to look over at the Athena table. Now that I looked closer, _all_ of the Athena kids were glowering at me. I heard from Danae that they were really brainy and smart, but I thought that a better word for them was _creepy_. Sure, Annabeth was pretty in a nerdy kind of way, but those gray eyes just made me shiver. They looked cold and frigid and I concluded that they were all ax wielding serial killers on the inside. I figured that this subconscious hatred towards them probably had something to do with our moms, but I didn't think about that for too long.

All in all, I didn't like thinking about my mom, period. I tried to pretend that I was one of these clueless undetermined demigods, and that I could get claimed by my true godly parent any second. It was too bad that I couldn't keep that up when Danae—who, in being a daughter of Iris, was _also_ thrown in at the Hermes table—explained that we had to get up and sacrifice some of our food to the gods.

The whole concept was just kind of bizarre to me. Tossing a bit of food into a fire didn't seem like it would win us much favor from our godly mom or dad, but I decided to just go with it. I stood and ended up getting elbowed by people trying to move ahead in line. I watched as kids tossed strawberries or pizza or—in Connor Stoll’s case—a pack of peanut M&Ms into the fire, and mutter their godly parent’s name.

“What do _we_ say when we get up there?” I asked Laurel, who was standing behind me in line.

She shrugged and pushed her square glasses up on her nose, like she didn’t care much about the whole offering-to-the-gods thing.

When it was my turn, I tried to think about what my mom might want me to offer her. In the end, I dumped most of my strawberries and a piece of bread into the sacrificial fire.

 _To Arachne,_ I thought, assuming it would be bad if someone overheard me saying my mother’s name out loud. After a second of hesitation, I tacked on a quick prayer. _Mom, I know you’re not a Fate or anything, but maybe you could pull some hypothetical strings or spider webs or whatever to make everything works out okay for me? If you really are a goddess, you should be able to send me some kind of sign, right? I could use the guidance._

The flame sputtered and grew brighter, and I was left to trudge back to the crowded Hermes table, not knowing if my prayer had reached its desired destination. I plopped down next to Laurel, and Danae took the seat across from me.

“So, how was your first day, Ari?” Laurel inquired, almost robotically. “Pull some good pranks? Piss off some Athena kids?”

“Sure did!” Danae announced before I could answer for myself, her brown eyes full of excitement. “You missed out on the fun, Laurel. Just like always.”

Laurel rolled her eyes. “What I missed out on was getting myself on the bad sides of about a dozen master strategists. Honestly, Ari, when I first met you I thought you’d be smarter than to side with the Stoll brothers.”

“You seem to resent the claimed campers quite a lot,” I noted, carefully.

“How’d you get to _that_ conclusion?” Laurel questioned, defensively.

“It’s true, though,” Danae confirmed, nodding at me.

Laurel put her hands up. “All I’m saying is that us undetermined kids should stick together.”

Danae was shaking her head, sending her rainbow hair swinging in every direction. “Laurel, you’re hopeless.”

“I still can’t believe that in your whole year of being here, you’ve never once gotten a sign from your mom,” I told Laurel.

She responded, “They’re _gods_. I guess they have bigger things to worry about than their half-mortal children. Most kids here have never even met their godly parent, even if they _are_ claimed.”

This took me by surprise. “ _Never_?”

“Never,” Danae echoed, her blue eyes now holding a look of misery.

That just wasn’t right. I could understand the monsters not being able to see their children at Camp Echidna; they’re monsters who are hunted by demigods constantly. Medusa or the Minotaur wouldn’t be able to just up and leave to go visit their kids whenever they wanted, but _the gods_ on the other hand... They’re the _gods_!

My train of thought was interrupted by Chiron the centaur knocking his hoof against the stone. Everyone quieted down as he stood at the front table.

“Good evening, campers,” he addressed. “A few announcements before we continue with our meal.” His eyes swept around the crowd of demigods as he issued some information about cabin inspection tomorrow, and who would be on watch duty for new arrivals on Half-Blood Hill tonight. He paused when his eyes landed on me. The same suspicion-filled look from when I first met him crossed his squinting eyes again. “And, we have a new camper... Ariadne Weaver.”

A few people turned to look at me, but most seemed like they didn’t care much about just another unclaimed demigod.

“Anything to add, Mr. D?” Chiron asked another older man sitting with him at the front table.

The chubby man with curly black hair appeared utterly uninterested in anything Chiron had been saying. He looked up from his Diet Coke only briefly before managing to spout, “Yes, yes, welcome to Camp, Ariadne Webber. I’m _looking forward_ to teaching you and training you and blah, blah, blah. Can we get on with dinner now?”

Chiron sat down without protest, so I figured that Mr. D’s _quality_ introduction speech wasn’t any more horrible than was average.

“Wow,” Danae chimed once everyone had started chatting again. “He only got your last name wrong. That’s a first. To be honest, I think he’s still convinced my name is Danielle.”

“Yeah, you’re lucky,” Laurel broke in. “You should have heard him my first week at Camp. Kept having to tell him my name’s _Laurel Vicario,_ not _Loretta Demario_.”

“I think it probably has to do with me being named after his wife,” I told them, taking a bite of an apple.

Danae and Laurel both paused, looked at each other, and then smirked.

“You’re named after _what_?” Danae giggled.

“His wife. The princess Ariadne,” I explained. “Mr. D. That stands for Dionysus, right? God of wine? What did he do to get stuck down here?”

“Oh my gods,” Laurel laughed. “You _are_ named after our camp director’s wife. I bet you know the entire myth, right?”

“Sure I do,” I told her. “I can name all their kids, too. Wanna hear me _list_ them?” I asked jokingly.

“Oh, please don’t,” Laurel insisted. “I already have to see his son Pollux every day, and I really don’t need more evidence of Mr. D procreating.”

“Pollux? Is he a demigod here?”

“Yeah. Over at that table over there, sitting alone.”

I turned to see where Laurel was gesturing, and sure enough, there was a guy sitting all by himself at table number twelve. He looked maybe seventeen or eighteen, and he picked at his food, not really eating anything. He was blond, instead of dark-haired like his dad, but otherwise looked exactly the same. Well, maybe he looked a little less dumpy and sleazy than the wine god, but he was clearly his father’s son.

“He lost his brother in the Battle of the Labyrinth,” Danae said quietly, explaining the boy’s dismal appearance.

“Danae, you’re supposed to be the daughter of sunshine and rainbows,” Laurel stated. “Lighten up.”

Danae shrugged. “At least he can see his dad every day. I think that probably helps.”

“Yeah, well, when you’re unclaimed, you don’t even have any brothers or sisters to lose, so...”

While the two girls continued to debate, I sat back and watched Pollux somberly move the food around on his plate. Turning briefly to look at Dionysus, I saw that the god was watching his son, too, with a mildly concerned look on his face. I realized that Pollux was the only person at this camp that saw their godly parent on a regular basis.

All this time I’d thought of the demigods here as spoiled and well-off because their parents were gods. I thought they always got whatever they wanted and were treated just like all the heroes in the myths after coming home victorious from a battle; like kings and queens. Now, I realized it was more like Theseus’s particular returning story; how he lost his love, and how his father jumped off the palace roof in despair, and all that depressing stuff.

All the minor gods’ children were packed into the Hermes cabin, like they were no better than the undetermined kids, even though they knew who their parents were. Not to mention the sheer amount of unclaimed kids in Cabin Eleven. I thought about Laurel, who’d been sleeping on a worn out old sleeping bag on the floor in the corner of another family’s cabin for a year, with nothing but a crate to hold her stuff.

“What do you think, Ari?” Danae asked me suddenly.

I snapped out of my thoughts. “Sorry, what?”

“Do you think the minor gods should get their own cabins at Camp?” she questioned. “And, like, maybe thrones on Olympus?”

“Well, I don’t know about that...” I hesitated. “The thrones thing seems kind of traditional, don’t you think? Like, it’s been just the twelve Olympians, ever since... forever, right?”

“Told you,” Laurel sneered at Danae. “Ari’s right. It’s been this way forever. Nothing we do could ever bring that amount of change.”

Upon seeing Danae’s sullen expression, I added quickly, “But, I honestly wouldn’t know... I’m new to the whole gods thing, remember? I _do_ think that you should have a place to sleep other than on the floor of the Hermes cabin, though.”

Danae’s face brightened. “See, that’s what I’m saying!”

“Danae, I’m surprised you haven’t made like Nakamura did and joined up with the titans already.”

The daughter of Iris’s smile dropped off her face. A couple of other campers who were sitting nearby paused, too, and gave my unclaimed friend looks of dismay.

“What?” Laurel snapped. “We’re all thinking it. That’s where Mr. D was all spring; on a mission, checking up on all the minor gods and making sure they aren’t going to switch sides.”

Danae’s voice was colder than I’d ever heard it when she said, “That doesn’t mean we have to join them if they do.”

Laurel shrugged. “Well, a lot of good the gods are doing to make sure their own _children_ aren’t switching sides. What else do they expect to happen when they never claim their own kids?”

Another unclaimed boy sitting near us spoke up, “Chiron would say something like, ‘The gods work in mysterious ways.’”

“ _Exactly_ ,” yet another camper joined in. “The gods and their pawns don’t know what they’re doing, and they’re on the losing side of a war.”

“Wait,” I told them. “What are you talking about? What war?” I remembered Nico telling me about the Battle of the Labyrinth, and all of the _plans to make_ with the demigods; was that connected to the titans and the gods?

Laurel explained, “You know how there was a big fight between the gods and the titans way back when?”

I remembered my Greek mythology book. “The war that ended when Kronos’s children chopped him up with his own scythe and cast him into Tartarus. Emphasis on _ended_.”

“No,” Laurel told me. “Kronos reformed from all those pieces down in the Underworld. He’s up here now, trying to take control of the world again. And I don’t blame him; the world is a wreck.”

“Well, the world will be even _more_ of a wreck if the titans take over,” Danae voiced. “They basically just want chaos. I mean, even more chaos than the world is already in.”

“But the minor gods are on his side this time?” I questioned. “Why?”

“Because,” Laurel clarified. “Just like Little Miss Rainbow over here wanting her own cabin, the minor gods want some recognition. And, apparently, Kronos has promised them it. So, when the minor gods go revolting, their children—sick of being stuck in the Hermes cabin for the rest of their summers—go ahead and join up with them, too; like Ethan Nakamura, son of Nemesis, along with any other demigods that happen to be a _bit_ angry at their mom or dad for never so much as talking to them.”

“That’s not true, Laurel,” chimed in a younger camper at the table. “The gods talk to heroes like Percy and Annabeth.”

“That’s just because Percy’s some kind of chosen one and they're afraid he’ll let Olympus fall or something, stupid. Of _course_ his dad’s gonna talk to him.”

“Percy Jackson?” I asked, amused. I remembered how messy he looked, how twitchy and ADHD he was. “A _chosen one_?”

“Yeah!” Danae confirmed, excitement in her voice. “There’s some huge prophecy about him and about how he’s going to save the world.”

“Or not,” Laurel reminded everyone.

“Why do you have to be so pessimistic?”

“Because I’m stuck in the stupid Hermes cabin for the rest of my life until my mother gets any interest in claiming me, unless I want to go back to Arizona only to have monsters come after me and put my entire family in danger. Being a half-blood sucks.” Laurel slammed her fork down into her dinner with a sense of finality, chewing frustratedly and glaring at the other campers at the table.

Danae sighed and went back to her food, too, but not before replying, “Well, I don’t _not_ agree with you. Ha. Don’t, not. Is that, like, a double negative, or what?”

Laurel didn’t answer. She just shoved food in her mouth angrily, like she resented even the strawberries here.

After dinner, the Hermes cabin flooded out of the dining pavilion and down to Cabin Eleven. I set up my sleeping bag in the corner by Laurel, and stared up into the rafters lining the ceiling of the old structure.

The titans and the gods were at war again, but this time it was looking like the titans were winning. Danae said that the world would be cast into chaos if the titans took over. And what had Laurel claimed Percy Jackson was? A chosen one that would save the world? I may not have known him very well, but at the moment, I wasn’t the least bit convinced that that teenage boy was capable of stopping all-powerful titans from ruling the world.

I wondered what the _dual-bloods’_ opinions were on the war. Were they on the titans’ side, because they hated the gods? I hadn’t even heard anything about the war during my short stay there.

Kaia would most likely want the gods to fall. She was always so opposed to the concept of demigods. Though, I felt like Chaos—despite his name—would not like the world to be tossed into disarray. He seemed to appreciate order and regulation and balance, and he always appeared uncomfortable when someone said something against the demigods. Maybe even Theo and Elise would be the same way, and not want the world to get disrupted by the defeat of the gods.

Either way, it sounded like there was a pretty big war on, and I knew that eventually, if I stayed here, I’d have to pick a side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized that even though Mr. D messed up Ari's last name and changed it from Weaver to Webber, it still works with the whole spider theme. ~Adventures in editing~


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! We are two months into 2015 already, and this story turned two years old on the 12th of January. Happy birthday, Camp Echidna!
> 
> I hope you all enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy writing them.

Wise Girl was just about as frightening in my dreams as she was in real life.

“Chiron, this is _serious_!” Annabeth snapped.

“Child, nothing will get resolved if you have a temper like this.”

The old centaur and the daughter of Athena were on the porch of the Big House this time. The porch light flickered, casting their shadows off into the night. Apparently they were in a heated argument. I was starting to wonder if Annabeth had any real conversations with people or if she just liked to fight with them.

“We could be in danger, though,” the daughter of Athena demanded.

"She got over the borders of Camp with ease. She can't possibly be a monster," Chiron reassured her, though he didn’t look at her when he said this.

"Yeah, without a satyr," she reminded him.

Chiron flicked his tail and told her, "Annabeth, child, you’re thinking irrationally about this.”

Annabeth paused to straighten up, blowing a blond curl out of her face. “I’m a daughter of Athena,” she said, more to herself than Chiron. “I’m capable of rational thinking.”

Chiron whispered to himself, something I couldn’t make out.

“What?” Annabeth snapped her head up to look at Chiron, as if he might have just said something important.

“I said nothing,” he muttered.

“No...” Annabeth said, a suspicious look crossing her face. I could see the gears turning in her head. “You know something, don’t you, Chiron?”

“About what, Annabeth?”

“About _Ariadne_. I can feel it in my gut; there’s something off about her. And you know something that I don’t.”

“I believe that Ariadne is to be trusted.”

"You won’t tell me anything,” she figured, speaking firmly. “Nobody will listen to me except my cabin mates, you know. I, for one, think you should be taking the advice of children of the goddess of wisdom."

Without another word, she turned on her heels and stormed down the porch steps into the darkness, heading off in the direction of the cabins.

My dreams shifted after that, to a familiar place at Camp Echidna.

The Arena was nearly empty, but the few dual-bloods that were there were pleasant changes from the sight of Camp Half-Blood, full to the brim with fussy demigods. It was early morning, just past sunrise, I suspected.

Kaia was there, watching something with an amused look on her face and shifting around on her two snake trunk legs. Chaos was off to the side, goggles over his eyes and a sword in hand, hacking mercilessly at a straw dummy.

“Look at the _possitivess_ , Chaoss,” Kaia chimed.

“Like what?” he growled, stabbing his sword into the dummy again.

“Like how Ruin hassn’t bugged you in a full twenty-four hourss!”

Chaos stopped slashing the dummy for a second, gave it a hard look, and then broke into a small smile. “Well, I guess you’re right about that.”

“Ssee what I mean?”

“That doesn’t change the fact that this is still completely unfair,” he remarked, returning to a combat stance, though this time it seemed a little more calm and collected, like I’d learned to expect from him.

“I know.” Kaia’s slitted reptilian eyes held a dismal look. “Have you talked to Lamia about it again yet?

“About a million times since yesterday,” Chaos reported.

“And?”

“Nothing. Just more cryptic remarks about fate and destiny and how _thiss iss for the besst_.”

“Chaoss,” sounded a voice from behind me. “I’d work on that impresssion of me if I were you.”

Lamia, the snake-tailed camp director, stood behind us with her hands on her scaly hips and a fang-filled smile on her face.

Chaos went red in the face when he noticed who it was, stuttering, “Sorry, Lamia. I— I didn’t know you were— nevermind. What can we do for you?” Even through his goggles, I could tell he was looking expectantly at his instructor, like he was waiting for orders, or maybe just some good news.

Lamia slithered up to him and stated plainly, “I’ve had a vission.”

Before I could see any more of the scene playing out in my dreams, Danae shook me awake.

“Morning, Ari,” she cheered. I could tell that Danae was definitely a morning person. Her multicolored hair was up in a ponytail and she was already dressed in orange Camp Half-Blood garb, ready to face the day.

Me, on the other hand, not so much. I rolled over on the hard floor, dragging my sleeping bag with me, but I only managed to run into Laurel sitting next to me.

“Hey!” she remarked. “I’m trying to clean up around here. You know, that’s what you do during _cabin clean-up_ ,” she announced loudly to the rest of the Hermes kids, who, unsurprisingly, weren’t doing much in the ways of preparing for the occasion.

I watched the entire Hermes cabin shuffle awkwardly, hoping someone else would speak up. Meanwhile, I reached down to scratch at my arm bandage. I found that it had come unraveled while I was sleeping. Stripping the fabric away, I found that the wound had healed almost completely. All that was left now were the two small white scars where Kaia’s fangs had met my skin. I realized that my ribs and nose no longer hurt from Ruin’s attack, either.

“Come on, Laurel,” Travis whined, snapping me out of my thoughts. “ _Annabeth_ is the inspector today. You know we don’t stand a chance. We might as well march ourselves down to the kitchens and start washing the Camp’s dishes right _now_.”

“Just do what we always do and stuff everything under your bunks and in the rafters,” Danae suggested brightly, twirling her hair around her finger absent-mindedly.

Finally, Connor sighed and got up, clapping his hands. “Alright, you heard Sunshine and Rainbows. Someone get the ladder.”

The members of the Hermes cabin slowly started peeling themselves off of the floor and out of their bunks, proceeding to grab brooms and half-heartedly sweep dust around the floor. Others went to the corner of the cabin and retrieved a small step ladder, and placed it in the center of the room. Travis climbed on top of it precariously and held out his hands. People started handing him sleeping bags and bundles of clothes, and he began carelessly tossing them up into the wide beams that made up the ceiling of the cabin.

“Careful! You’re going to get spider webs all over my stuff!” snapped one camper.

“Operational hazard,” Travis said, shrugging.

“Why are they throwing stuff into the rafters?” I asked Laurel, thoroughly confused by the chain of events.

Laurel rolled her eyes behind her glasses. “ _Travieso_ and his brother are both too lazy to get their siblings to actually organize their stuff, so they hide it under their beds and in the ceiling for inspection.”

Danae chimed in, “It’s a Hermes Cabin secret!”

“How do they get it down afterwards?” I inquired.

“They throw more stuff up to knock it down.”

“There’s got to be a better way to do that,” I muttered.

“Yeah,” Laurel agreed. “They could actually clean stuff.”

Next to us, Danae burst out in giggles like that was the most silly thing she’d ever heard.

“Hey, Travis,” I called. “Get down from there for a second.”

“Why?” he replied, about to throw a wad of laundry up into the rafters, basketball-style.

“I’ve got an idea.”

The campers eyed me, coughing and shifting nervously on their feet. Reluctantly, Travis stepped down. Without another word, I took to the ladder and jumped up to the highest step, precariously balancing on the top. I leapt upwards with all the force my legs could muster. The ladder fell away underneath me, but I grabbed onto one of the wooden beams and managed to hold a tight enough grip with my hands to hang freely from it without falling. After that, all I had to do was hoist myself up into the dusty space above the cabin’s sleeping area. The roof brushed the top of my head while I kneeled perilously on the rafter.

I'd done this a million times on playground monkey bars; it really wasn’t much different here.

Beneath me, Travis whooped and set the tiny step ladder back upright to climb up and hand me the ball of clothes he was holding. I set it carefully next to me, brushing cobwebs out of the way as I did so.

So, that was how I ended up helping Cabin Eleven just barely pass inspection that morning. When I was done placing sleeping bags and dirty clothes up there, I simply hopped down. And just in time, too, it seemed, because it was just then that Wisdom and Battle Jr. pushed the front door open.

“Annabeth,” Connor greeted proudly, a grin spread across his face as he gestured to the not-quite-as-messy-as-it-could’ve-been cabin.

Even though most of the bunk beds still weren’t made and there were still dust bunnies roaming around in the corners of the cabin, Annabeth seemed the slightest bit impressed. She held a clipboard and pen in one hand, and had a messenger bag slung around her shoulder. If she was ten years older, she would’ve looked like one of those stereotypical uptight secretaries from TV shows.

Anyway, I was thankful that her daunting gray eyes didn’t wander to the ceiling, where she would’ve most likely spotted an article or two of clothing hanging, or a corner of a crate sticking out over the edge of the wooden framework of the roof.

As Annabeth wordlessly assessed the cleanliness of the room, Travis nudged me with his elbow and whispered, “You couldn’t, like, get a spider or two to crawl up her arm and scare her off before she notices how sloppy this place really is, could you?”

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing, and, of course, being the ever-observant daughter of Athena that she was, Annabeth noticed. She stalked over to me and looked me up and down as if I, too, were part of the cabin she was supposed to be inspecting for imperfections. Apparently she found them, because she put on a smile faker than the Tooth Fairy.

“Chiron told me to deliver this to you,” she said through gritted teeth, reaching into the bag hanging off her shoulder and pulling out a wad of orange cloth. She dropped it into my hands and turned to Travis, standing silent beside me. “Three out of five, Cabin Eleven,” she remarked, checking off something on her clipboard. “See you at monster fighting practice.”

As soon as she turned tail to leave and let the screen door swing shut behind her with a bang, the Hermes cabin erupted in muffled victory.

Even though I felt like three out of five points wasn’t a whole lot to be celebrating for, Danae pushed her fist into the air, narrowly missing Connor’s face, and hissed, “ _Yes_!” under her breath in triumph.

Meanwhile, I carefully unfolded Annabeth’s “delivery” in my hands, as if it might have an explosive wrapped up inside. Instead, I found something much more amiable.

In big bold letters printed above the silhouette of what looked like a horse with wings, it read, “Camp Half-Blood,” across the orange fabric of the T-shirt. I’d seen kids wearing them around Camp, but I had never thought about getting one myself. I was supposed to hate this place. I was supposed to resent the demigods. So far, I hadn’t been that good of a model dual-blood in this place, what with all the pranking alongside the half-bloods and helping them with stupid stuff like cabin clean-up. I tried to think of what Kaia would say if she could see me now. Probably something along the lines of, _“Uh, Ari? What do you think you’re doing? You’re ssuppossed to be on_ our _sside.”_

Though, that made me wonder what the exact sides were supposed to be. If the dual-bloods were one team and the demigods were the other, where did that put Kronos and the titans? And the minor gods that wanted recognition from the elder gods? How about Laurel, who seemed to hate the gods almost as much as Kaia did, though I’m sure if they ever met each other they’d be tearing each other’s throats out just for existing in their presence.

The unclaimed demigod herself poked me in the arm. “You gonna put that thing on, or just stare at it all day?” Laurel pushed her glasses up. “Because I’m hungry for some Camp-quality eggs and bacon, and we’ve got a lot of activities to get through today, too.”

...

Breakfast was relatively uneventful, and went similar to dinner the night before, except instead of debating the Lord of Time’s imminent worldwide takeover, Danae and Laurel were heatedly discussing the concept of bacon.

“But,” Danae sputtered. “That’s a real live pig you’re eating!”

“It sure isn’t _live_ anymore,” Laurel commented, taking another bite, along with some scrambled eggs.

“It was a living thing before someone murdered it.”

Laurel shrugged. “My dad has a whole farm of these things down in Arizona. They’re raised to be, ahem, _murdered_ , as you so nicely put it.”

Danae responded with a gagging sound, to which Laurel replied sharply with something along the lines of, “We have this conversation _every week_ , Miss Peace, Love, and Rainbows!”

I tugged at the collar to my orange Camp Half-Blood shirt, and hoped to the gods that the two girls wouldn’t ask my opinion on their argument. I had nothing personal against pigs, though I had to admit that the bacon at Camp Half-Blood was too good to pass up eating on a nice day like this.

It was undeniably summer, now; the sun was bright, a slight breeze blew through the valley, and two campers and a satyr had stumbled over the border this morning. Chiron had taken this opportunity during morning announcements to tell everyone that we still needed lookouts posted by the borders. They weren’t so much for protection—the dragon, Peleus, had that taken care of—as to make sure that newly arriving demigods knew they were in the right place when they got here.

After sitting through an entire meal of Laurel trying to ask Danae why she still eats the eggs even though they came from a chicken—“ _a living thing, Danae!”_ —the Hermes cabin marched out and started on their daily activities.

I wasn’t good at much of anything. Archery was disastrous, just like at Camp E. Canoeing couldn't have gone worse. In fact, the only area that I showed any promise in was climbing the gigantic rock wall at the edge of camp, which I could do in less than a minute, leaving my friends in the dust. Well, I guess you could count arts and crafts as something I was good at. I _did_ manage to do a thing or two with the looms in there.

It was nearly evening when Travis directed us towards the arena. It was one of our final activities for the day, and everyone seemed exhausted. As we marched across Camp, our group passed some of the half-goat people that I’d noticed accompanying campers places. At first, I’d gotten the impression that they might be like servants here, the way they all looked so reverently to Mr. D. Instead, I noted later that the satyrs were almost treated like equals. They seemed to have friends around Camp, and participated in some of the activities just like the campers did.

I never once had gotten the idea that they were anything but what they looked like: regular humans who just happened to have goat legs. Though, as I passed a few of them, they whipped their heads around to do a double-take. I could’ve sworn that one of them had even taken a deep breath in through their nose, like they were smelling me. I stared them down and they quickly shuffled away with panic-stricken faces, leaving me to wonder if maybe the satyrs would cause a little more trouble for me at Camp Half-Blood than I had first thought.

I’d seen the outside of the arena here on my tour with Percy and Annabeth, but I hadn’t seen the inside. When we passed under the doors to the big building, I noted that the ceiling was high, and the room was scattered with straw dummies in Greek armor, just like back at Camp Echidna.

The Hermes cabin approached a group of a dozen blond kids on one side of the arena that I recognized as children of Athena, and glares were exchanged in greeting. Percy was also there, with the big guy in flannel that had been sitting with him at dinner last night.

He was huge; probably as tall as some of Theo’s siblings back at Camp E, and had shaggy hair and baseball glove hands, too. The only striking difference between Percy’s friend and Theo’s siblings, in fact, was the number of eyes they had.

This guy had only one large brown eye right above his nose. It swung around, watching the Hermes kids join the group. It was a little unnerving to see in action, but the thought that this cyclops was perfectly at ease in the midst of a couple dozen demigods was dizzying. Either the demigods were even stupider than I had come to believe, or they _knew_ that they had a monster among them.

“Um. That’s a cyclops,” I stated.

“Well, of course it is,” Danae replied enthusiastically. “That’s Percy’s brother, Tyson. He helped us in the Battle of the Labyrinth, so no need to fear!”

“Brother,” I repeated.

“Brother,” Laurel echoed, nodding.

My mind slingshotted me back to my conversation with Elise the day before. She had said that when she was fourteen, a cyclops had given her the scar that runs across her face. It was part of her argument about how everything wasn’t just black and white with monsters and demigods. There were a lot of in-between beings. I wondered where Percy Jackson’s brother landed on the spectrum of good versus evil.

We gathered in the center of the arena where Chiron trotted around, helping some younger kids with their armor. Also present, were a bunch of gigantic crates in the middle of the group of demigods. One crate rattled and jumped a little, like someone was trying desperately to break themselves out.

Chiron held his hands up and everyone pulled their eyes away from the menacing boxes.

He cleared his throat, and spoke, “Today for practice, we will be making use of some leftover monsters that our previous swordmaster left us.”

“You guys had a swordmaster?” I whispered.

“Yeah,” Laurel replied. “Briefly.”

Chiron continued, “Most of you have fought these before, during the games a few weeks ago, so they shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. And, because of what happened last time we released these, we’ll be keeping them contained in the arena, for now, instead of trying to track them in the forest.”

Across the circle of campers, I saw Percy and Annabeth look at each other funny.

He held up a scroll. “I have you paired up already, so when I call your name, find your partner, and get a weapon. Connor and Travis Stoll, Danae Olson and Laurel Vicario, Isabella Hesper and Lydia Sidra...”

Chiron continued rattling off names from his list, while people slowly found their partners and took a spot around the arena.

When he got to my name, he hesitated, like was doubting his list. “Ariadne Weaver and... Tyson.”

The cyclops looked to his brother, and Percy gestured to me. Next to him, Annabeth stood straight up, with her gray eyes focused, right on me. When I met her gaze, she looked to Tyson, who was slowly inching his way towards me.

Meanwhile, Chiron was finishing up with the last of his list, “...Aaron Hale and Zack Pazel, and Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase.”

“Figures,” Laurel grunted while she strapped a sword belt around her waist. “Those two are even more inseparable than the Stoll brothers.”

“Why?” I asked. “They don’t seem anything alike.”

I couldn’t see her face beneath a giant helmet she’d just put on, but Danae almost squealed with excitement. “Percy and Annabeth are the _dream team_ that is going to save the world together!”

I thought about Percy and Annabeth, and figured that a son of Poseidon and a daughter of Athena would be an unlikely match, but would be really powerful together. Good allies, if they could actually get along. I also thought about how I’d never heard the phrase “dream team” used unironically before Danae just spoke it, but my train of thought was interrupted by Tyson the cyclops joining me.

“Uh, hello,” he grunted.

“Hi,” I replied awkwardly. I’d never spoken to a cyclops before.

At the arrival of Tyson, Laurel gravitated away, towards the far corner of the arena, taking Danae with her.

“Do you want a sword?” the huge guy asked me shyly, holding one out to me. He looked skittish, like he was nervous about being around me. I wondered absently if he was just shy, or if he was like the satyrs, and could sense something off about me.

“Sure,” I told him, taking the Celestial Bronze blade from him. “Thanks.”

I weighed the sword in my hand. It felt awkward, like it was too long for me. Even just those few hours I’d spent training at Camp Echidna with my daggers had made me used to working with short knives. I looked across the arena to see Annabeth standing side by side with Percy, pulling a knife out of her own belt. I was a little jealous of her small blade, but I stopped thinking about it when I reminded myself that hers wasn’t even made of the right material. Her dagger might’ve been beautiful, made from glowing bronze and all, but I wanted my Typhonian Lead knives back, not some shiny demigod weapon.

“So, you’re a son of Poseidon, too?” I asked Tyson.

His one eye lit up. “Percy is my brother!” he told me happily.

“Alright, is everybody ready?” Chiron jammed a crowbar into the edge of a crate. The box bounced and shook impatiently. “Don’t forget to work together!” he reminded us before cracking open the box.

One side of the box fell forward to reveal a gigantic creature inside. It was like a picture from my Greek Mythology book jumped out of the page at me and grew ten times as big.

“ _Scorpius_ ,” I breathed, remembering the myth about Orion.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have more time to think about the story, because the huge scorpion rushed out of its box at top speed, obviously enjoying its newfound freedom. Meanwhile, Chiron continued to crack open the rest of the crates. Five more eight-legged monstrosities blasted out of their tiny prisons one by one like bullets from a gun.

 _What kind of camp has_ leftover monsters _lying around?_ I thought to myself. I raised my too-heavy sword and Tyson hefted a giant club. The scorpions skittered around the arena while pairs of demigods got up the courage to step forward and fight one. Percy and Annabeth seemed to be doing well, working together perfectly like Chiron had told us to. I spotted Laurel and Danae a little ways away, in a corner where they had moved off to together, holding their own against a particularly large scorpion. The giant stinger towered over my friends, occasionally dipping down to jab at them.

Danae moved like mist, fluttering in and out of the scorpion’s pincer range. She bashed her shield against the monster’s ugly, gnashing face and laughed. Laurel, on the other hand, stayed low, creeping around the scorpion like ivy and hacking at its tail with a sword.

All the monsters were occupied with other demigod pairs, leaving Tyson and I with nothing to attack. We stood and watched, waiting for an opening to help another team. I could tell that Tyson really didn’t like the scorpions much. Next to me, he eyed Percy and Annabeth as they took down the giant scorpion they had been fighting. Tyson only flinched when they immediately went to go take on another one, alongside Travis and Connor. The Stoll brothers were stumbling over themselves, trying to get a hit in on the giant creature.

Mostly, though, these were well-trained demigods. The amount of monsters in the room dwindled after a while, until only the biggest two scorpions were left. Still, we stayed put. It was really uneventful, honestly.

That is, until I heard a strangled scream from the other end of the arena.

My head whipped around to see Laurel and Danae, still working together to try and bring down the biggest scorpion of all. Everyone else in the room was focusing on the only other one left, while my friends were losing steam. Danae had screamed and raised her shield to block the scorpion from snapping at her with a pincer. It connected with the circle of bronze on Danae’s arm with a _clang!_ and she was knocked to the ground forcefully.

“Tyson, we’ve got to help them,” I said frantically.

Without waiting to see if he’d follow, I sprinted across the arena. Danae was scrambling to get back up when I reached them, and Laurel was still trying to cut off the scorpion’s tail, which would’ve made it infinitely easier to defeat. I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to do once I was in position, but I set myself between the giant monster and Danae anyway, and raised my sword.

All at once, it stopped. The monster’s gross, chomping mouth just two feet away from my face stopped its gnashing. It paused its pincers in mid-air, ready to clamp around me. The scorpion stopped clicking and twitching. It was completely still.

I was so confused, I let my sword dip down to touch the floor, but the scorpion still did nothing. Then, it started scuttling on its eight big legs, like it was about to turn around and leave. Someone yelled my name, right before an arrow sprouted from the monster’s face. It was a bullseye; the bronze arrow was lodged right in between the scorpion’s snapping mouthparts.

Its tail sagged, the body lowering to the arena floor. Another arrow hit the scorpion, and then a third for good measure. The body of the giant creature was truly still, now.

Danae was still on the ground, flat on her back, breathing hard and clutching her sword tightly, even though the monster was dead. In fact, the scorpion was just beginning to turn to dust as the mass of other campers ran up to us.

Tyson had gotten there first. Maybe he had come after me, and arrived while the scorpion wasn’t attacking; I hadn’t noticed him. Now, all the other demigods from the Hermes and Athena cabins had joined us to watch the monster crumble. I couldn’t take my eyes away from its sleek amber exoskeleton melting into sand.

Chiron cantered up before anyone could speak. He put his bow down, when he saw that it was dead. “Are you alright?” he asked me, Danae, and Laurel.

I nodded, and Laurel crouched down to haul Danae up off the floor. Both of them stood on wobbly legs when they came back up.

“That thing...” Laurel muttered. “It just _stopped_.”

Percy Jackson looked around, then spoke up hesitantly, “Do you think it’s because Tyson’s a cyclops?” He didn’t sound too sure about his theory. “Maybe they didn’t want to attack him because...”

Percy stopped himself, but I knew what he would’ve said. _“Because he’s a monster.”_

Tyson said nothing but, “The big bug is dead.”

Chiron looked from me to the scorpion, and announced to all the other gaping half-bloods, “Good work today. That’s all for this evening, go get ready for dinner.”

Slowly, the demigods dispersed. Tyson, who had looked like he’d wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, shuffled towards the exit. Percy had to tug Annabeth away from the scene by the arm, but before the dream team left together, Annabeth stared at me, hard. Like... like she was putting the pieces together.

...

At dinner, I looked for Nico Di Angelo. He wasn’t at the Hermes table, which wasn’t a surprise, so I was tempted to go look in the woods for him. Maybe I could make my way back to Zeus’s Fist...

My thoughts were interrupted by Laurel tugging on my shoulder. She pulled me back, almost forcefully. We had been marching up to the dining pavilion, but now she was dragging me back behind a marble column.

“Laurel, what are you—”

“Ariadne, listen,” she told me sternly, stabbing her finger in my direction.

Her eyebrows were knit together. She seemed a little confused, a little angry, and _very_ jarred from the scene that played out in the arena. Danae wasn’t doing much better, and seemed to be in some sort of shock, the way she looked at the ground while she walked behind the rest of the Hermes cabin to their dinner table.

Laurel continued, “What happened in the arena? That thing was ready to kill Danae, and then you... you just...”

I was looking anywhere but her eyes. In the distance, against the green of the woods, I saw a shadowy figure talking with a camper.

“Laurel,” I said, pushing past her. “I’ll tell you everything later, alright? I promise. Just... hold on.”

She sidestepped as I passed her, staring at me as I made my way towards the edge of the woods. I didn’t bother looking back at her, and as I neared the trees, I saw that I was right about who I thought I saw there. It was the son of Hades. As I drew closer, I noticed who he was talking with, too. Percy Jackson.

They were standing just inside the treeline, and Nico had a shadow cast over his face, so I couldn’t see his expression. I slowed to a stop and waited for them to finish their conversation. From here, though, I could hear what they were talking about. Against my better judgement, I stayed close to listen.

Percy scratched the back of his neck and spoke uncertainly, “I don’t know... I mean, if you think that’s something that Luke might’ve done.”

“I know it, for sure,” Nico insisted. “I don’t know all the specifics yet, but I have some ideas about how he did it.”

“Alright,” Percy finally conceded. “Tell me when you find out more.”

Nico looked up at him, and I could see that he was almost grinning.

Percy added, “But Annabeth and me are leaving for Chiron’s mission tomorrow. I don’t know when we’ll get back.”

The shadows fell back into place over Nico’s eyes. He mumbled, “Oh, that’s right. Good luck on your search.”

“Thanks,” Percy replied. “See you around, Nico.”

I stepped behind a tree just in time for Percy to miss me as he walked back up to the pavilion. Nico stood in the shadow of a tree for a second, watching Percy leave, before setting his hand on the hilt of his sword at his hip, and starting to turn away, back into the woods.

“Nico,” I called, emerging from my hiding spot.

He jumped, his hand tightening on his sword hilt. When he turned and saw me, his face relaxed. “Ariadne. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“Me too,” I told him. “But, what were you just telling Percy?”

Nico’s eyes flitted towards the pavilion, and then back at me. “Some of those war plans I was telling you about.”

“Like what?” I inquired.

“I don’t know for sure.” Nico shrugged. “Something that will either get Percy killed or save the world, I think.”

“You know him pretty well then?” I asked. “At least, enough to ask him to do something dangerous, obviously.”

“We... owe each other a lot.” Nico paused, nervously searching for a way to change the subject. “He told me about what happened at your practice today. In the arena.”

My face fell. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Nico glanced at the sun falling in the sky, and the campers lining up for dinner behind us. “We can’t talk for long; they’ll want you back at dinner.”

“I’ll make it quick,” I promised. “I just need advice.”

“Advice? From a son of Hades?” Nico looked almost amused.

“ _Especially_ from a son of Hades,” I told him. “Listen, that scorpion didn’t attack me. None of them did,” I explained. “They were attacking every demigod in there, but not me.”

Nico’s face was dark, or at least, darker than normal. He reached down to twist his silver skull ring around his finger. “It’s not good that they can sense you like that. You need to be more careful to not draw attention. There are other beings around Camp—more than just monsters—that will recognize you for what you are.”

I nodded, thinking about the satyrs avoiding me, and even Chiron the centaur being a little suspicious. From what I’d pieced together from my dreams, other campers were already starting to figure out that something was up. As if I wasn't a freak among freaks already. “What should I do?” I asked him.

“If I were you,” Nico instructed, “I’d get out of here before anyone realizes what you are.”

“I should?”

“You can only try and hide what you are for so long,” he told me solemnly. He looked to the sky, and noted the setting sun distastefully. “I have to go. Important Ambassador of Pluto stuff. Take care, Ariadne.”

“You too. And, Nico,” I started.

He turned his oil slick eyes on me.

“You should try visiting Camp Echidna sometime, if you want to,” I informed him, not really sure what I was doing. “You wouldn’t have to tell them that you’re a demigod. They’d be happy to have you, if you were good enough at paintball.”

Nico gave me a small smile and the words, “Maybe I will,” before stepping through the shadows the trees made against the forest floor.

After watching the boy melt into the darkness, I made my way back up to the pavilion. Everyone had already started eating, so I skipped my offering to the gods that night. I sat across from Laurel and Danae. Over their heads, I saw Chiron and Mr. D eating at the head table. Dionysus might have sensed me staring, because he looked up from his food. I caught a glimmer of purple fire in his eyes, and I couldn’t look away. I took a strangled breath, remembering what Nico had said about being more careful to not draw attention to myself. The god of wine sipped his diet Coke casually, like he knew exactly what I was thinking, and was amused by it.

I ducked my head and focused back on Laurel and Danae. Neither of them looked like arguing about Titan wars or vegetarianism alike, so we mostly stayed quiet. Danae merely picked at her food.

“Are you feeling okay?” I asked her.

Her head jerked up, making her rainbow hair bounce. “Oh, yeah. I’m fine.” She managed a smile. “At least, I’m better than what I would’ve been if you and Tyson weren’t there to scare that scorpion off, huh?”

Laurel pushed her glasses up on her nose. She gave me a look of suspicion, but said, “Yeah. I think that if Orion knew that short girls who can barely hold up their swords are a giant scorpion’s kryptonite, he could have picked up an untrained girl in the village and maybe he wouldn’t be a constellation right now.”

Danae laughed, but I just snapped, “Hey!”

Chiron broke up our conversation by tapping his hoof against the marble. He gave the campers the evening announcements about activities the next day, and how the next Capture the Flag game would be tomorrow night. At that, Danae got really excited, telling the rest of the cabin how, _“We have to win this time, guys! It’ll be so great to beat those Athena kids!”_

I thought about Nico’s advice to get out of this place soon, and wondered if I’d stay here long enough to play Capture the Flag with my friends, against the children of Athena. I didn’t even _know_ if I wanted to stay or leave.

Chiron wrapped up his report by telling us that it was the Hermes cabin and Poseidon cabin’s turn to pick one camper each to be lookouts to help newcomers over the Camp border.

Travis and Connor both turned to me at the same time, and Danae leaned over and helpfully informed me, “The newbie always gets to do lookout patrol when it’s the cabin’s turn.”

And then Laurel added, “By ‘getting to do lookout patrol,’ they really just mean, ‘ _getting to stay up all night outside in the dark_ doing lookout patrol.’”

“Good luck staying awake!” Danae encouraged me.

“Thanks,” I grumbled.

...

After dinner, before Laurel could corner me again with questions about the scorpion, I slipped off to the armory to grab a sword before heading up the hill to join Percy.

I didn’t know whether to be glad that I didn’t have to be a lookout alongside Tyson the cyclops, or to be nervous because Percy would probably be up for asking questions about what happened.

Peleus was curled up around the tree like he normally was, and Percy was already sitting next to him, scratching underneath the dragon’s chin.

“Hey,” he greeted when he saw me.

When I neared, Peleus tightened his huge cable-like body around the base of the pine tree, and snapped his mouth.

“Whoa,” Percy exclaimed. “Calm down, Peleus. It’s just Ariadne.”

The big dragon laid his head down again, but still focused his beady yellow eyes at me cautiously. I sat a little ways away down the hill, technically outside the borders of Camp. Percy stayed under the pine tree.

I could smell the trees from the woods, and a bit of the ocean, too. There was a soft, cold breeze carrying scents from all over Camp. There was even something really disgusting mixed in with the regular smells that I suspected might’ve been Peleus’s breath. I shivered and picked at the grass on the ground.

We were silent for a long time, until Percy wondered aloud, “Kind of makes you feel small, right?”

I turned around to see the son of Poseidon with his head tilted back, looking up at the stars.

I replied, “I’ve always been short.”

“No, I mean, in the grand scheme of things. Those stars are about a gazillion miles away.”

“They’re just big spheres of fire,” I told him.

“That’s not what the sun god told me,” he said, matter of factly. I thought that we’d go back to not talking after that, and I was cool with it, but Percy found another subject right away. “So, you know Elise?”

I remembered first greeting Percy when Danae introduced us, and telling him hello from the daughter of Medusa back at Camp Echidna. “Yeah,” I replied. “We’re friends. How do you know her?”

“She was my neighbor, back in Manhattan.”

That took me by surprise. I guess I hadn’t thought of Elise living anywhere but at Camp, but I figured she must’ve lived out in the mortal world before that. Even so, what are the odds that she used to live near _Percy Jackson_?

“The apartment next to mine,” Percy elaborated. “She’d help me with my homework sometimes as a kid, but she moved away while I was at a boarding school one year. Her dad was in some bad accident, I think. I never knew where she went after that. Where did you meet her?”

“At a summer camp,” I said, blankly. I didn’t know that her dad had been in an accident.

“She’s really nice, huh? How did she know I was here, and that you’d meet me?”

“She, um...” I wracked my brain, trying to come up with something. “She just mentioned you once, I think.” Percy looked like he wanted to press further, but before he did, I told him, “Hey, I can take the first watch if you want to sleep first. When should I wake you up?”

“Sure,” Percy said reluctantly. “Wake me in a couple hours.”

“Sounds good.”

Percy laid back against the soft grass with his hands behind his head. Behind him, Peleus was all curled up, too, but I sensed that he would be ready to attack at a moment’s notice if needed to protect the majestic pine tree. A light breeze floating through the tree's needles made the Golden Fleece sway, shimmering like real gold. I wondered if it _was_ real gold. I tried to remember the story of the fleece from the ones that my father had told me.

He used to paint a picture in my mind as he recited the myths of the gods and monsters and heroes. I knew some stories by heart. Atalanta and Andromeda and Calypso and, of course, Ariadne.

The princess Ariadne was born the mortal daughter of King Minos of Crete. When Theseus came to slay the Minotaur, Ariadne helped him by giving him a magic ball of yarn to help him navigate the Labyrinth. The two fell in love, but before they could make it back to Athens, she was _accidentally_ marooned on an island. It all turned out alright for her, though, because Dionysus found her and made her his immortal wife.

I sat back in the grass and stared up at the stars sprinkling the sky. I found the constellation Corona; Ariadne’s wedding diadem. It was the only pattern of stars that I could recognize among the spray of lights dotting the night. Percy was right. It did make me feel small.

The night was very quiet, aside from the dragon’s breathing, and the occasional hoot of an owl. I wasn’t great at judging the pass of time, but I knew that it wasn’t long before Percy had fallen asleep.

It was silent and dark, aside from the moonlight. The longer I stared at a certain patch of darkness in the grass, the more shadows seemed to creep up on me. I blinked my eyes and the shadows retreated.

I played this game by myself for a while, until I got bored and realized exactly how tired I was. Closing my eyes for a minute, just to let them rest, I hoped I wouldn’t fall asleep right there on watch duty.

It was hard to judge how much time passed, but I was contemplating waking up Percy soon, just as I heard something in the distance. A rumbling, and crunching of dirt. My eyes focused in on a slowly moving object down the country road. It was a van, with its headlights off.

Quietly, it drove up, and I stood to greet it. Behind me, Peleus lifted his head and breathed out of his nose threateningly. Forgetting Percy entirely, I scrambled down Half-Blood Hill.

The van had its passenger side window rolled down now, and a familiar face peeked out of it at me.

“Are you coming or not?” Kaia hissed at me. “It _reekss_ of demigodss up here. And throw away that dumb ssword!”

I tossed the Celestial Bronze blade down and jogged up to the vehicle. I put my hands on the door and exclaimed, “Why are _you_ here?” I was grinning ear to ear, though.

Kaia huffed. “What? No ‘thank you’ for bussting you out of thiss place?”

Behind her, in the driver’s seat, Chaos drummed his hands on the steering wheel. He said, “Ariadne, Lamia asked us to come get you. She says we need to hurry back to Camp.”

“Camp Echidna?” I asked, not believing it.

“Get in the car already, Sspidergirl!” Kaia told me, excitedly. “Before the sscent of demigod infectss my brain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kaia be like: "Get in, losser. We're going quessting."


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally wrote this on October 21st, 2015 and posted it on my fanfiction net account.

**Oh my god.** Okay, I'm sorry, I'm laughing so hard right now.

 **First of all.** Hey everyone! It's been months! Almost a year **(edit on Oct. 8, 2016: TWO YEARS)**  since my last real update! I feel the need to reintroduce myself for some reason. I haven't talked to you guys all summer and honestly I have no idea what to say. I thought this fanfic would be, like, not findable anymore by now? Like, I didn't know people were still finding it and reading it. But I just got a lot of favs and follows this week and I'm like, whoa. Where did you all come from?

 **Basically,** all you need to know is that I'm a junior **(edit: senior)**  in high school this year. (Do the math. I started this fic at the end of 8th grade. Almost 3 **(4)**  years now. W o w.) I'm super busy with AP class homework, trying to find a job, writing original novels, and to a lesser extent, reading and drawing and keeping my sanity.

 **ANYWAY.** The reason I'm laughing and I'm here writing this for you today is because I'd like to share a story with you all! (Something I haven't done in a long time, ba-dum-crash.) I'm gonna tell you about a certain person that has been reviewing my stories for a while now, who always reviewed as a guest with the same name. He always reviewed with short, stupid stuff like "you're an idiot" and "no one cares," ESPECIALLY when I talked about rewriting, which I did often. I ignored the reviews because honestly who cares, but I got to thinking, since he always reviewed RIGHT after I posted the new chapter, that meant he must've followed my story with an account and logged out to make shitty reviews for some reason. Pretty pathetic, right? This meant he was actually invested in the story and was just writing bad things to see if I would comment on them (which I hadn't until now). Also I heard a rumor he likes to tell people to kill themselves? Not cool, dude. Anyway. The funny part comes now: yesterday morning, he reviewed randomly out of the blue and told me "please make the new version of this story soon." So, I don't know if anyone is reading this little blurb, or if anyone actually thinks its funny, but its funny to me that THIS PARTICULAR person actually cares about this story when _I_  don't even care about this story anymore. It's really ironic that my least favorite reviewer got me to come out of hiatus to update you all on what's going on in my life. Hi, Matt! -waves-

 **Real update stuff that matters:** I haven't written anything for this story in a year. **(Two years.)**  I literally have no idea if I ever will again. I love this story and I'll never forget it as my first big story that I had my heart set on completing, but I honestly have better things to spend my time on between real novels I'm writing and getting a real paying job. Would I keep writing this story if I had the time? Absolutely. I really wish I could give you the beginning, middle, and end of this story that I never could before, but I'm barely the same person I was in 8th grade when I started this, and my priorities have since changed drastically.

 **Basically what I'm saying** is that if you were waiting for a sign to get out of this hellhole of rewriting purgatory where I never make it to the halfway mark in this story, this is your official chance to be rid of it. This is like me giving you permission to pack your bags and find better PJO OC fanfic elsewhere. Check back in with me whenever, I'd be happy to talk to you and answer questions about characters and spoil the story plot for those of you who actually still care, but I doubt you do.  **(Message me on pseudophoenix tumblr com with any questions.)**

 **If you're leaving right now,** farewell! It was so nice to have you! If you're staying, you must be insane. But I like that. I still answer all PMs and might post other stuff on this account in the future, so it's not like I'm dropping off the face of the earth or anything. But, if you want to see more of my recent stuff, I'm mostly on AO3 now.

 **I cannot thank you all enough** for indirectly, unknowingly inspiring me to become an author. Hopefully you'll recognize my writing style in a published book someday.

See you around,

-AH


End file.
